


Saturday Night Special

by Cluegirl



Series: White Star Security 'verse [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Canon Typical Violence, Comfort Sex, Depression, Identity Porn, M/M, Multi, Stonyklunks, There's a reason for Howard Stark's A++ parenting, Too many secrets, You'd think people would know by now that Steve Rogers doesn't do as he's told, handicapped character, references to kidnapping and torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-05 06:41:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 37,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6693535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Howard survived the crash, but Maria did not?  What would that loss do to the already strained relationship between father and son?  How would the world change, and how would it remain the same?<br/>Tony runs a struggling technical trade school, and tries not to think about the past too much.  Steve, an unwilling celebrity alone in a crowd, ditches his bodyguards for a night of much needed anonymity.  They meet by chance in a gay bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Raccoons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trilliath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trilliath/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which something found is lost again, and urban wildlife make themselves useful.

*** Fury ***

Barton and Romanoff were in the break room when Nick Fury arrived at White Star Securities' Manhattan office: a half-full carafe from the coffeemaker, the scattered contents of a first aid kit, a bag of frozen peas, and two forks in an empty pie plate on the table between them. Both looked up briefly when he strode in, then went back to the business of bandaging Barton's bloody right thumb.

Nick closed the door, shutting out the murmurs from the rest of his crew, then put his shoulders to the door, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited. It didn't take long.

"You gotta give the guy credit," Barton muttered with a wince as Romanoff knotted the gauze, "The raccoons were a stroke of genius."

Nick felt the muscles under his good eye twitch as Natasha picked up the frozen peas and held them to the bruise swelling her left cheek.

"I mean, Jesus, those things are way bigger up close than you'd think, and fifteen, maybe twenty raccoons running around in Grand Central Station at rush hour on a Friday?" Barton went on, picking up the carafe as though to drink from it directly. "You couldn't ask for a better distraction."

"So you lost him three hours ago," Nick prompted, striding over to take the carafe away and pour out a cup for himself before smacking it back down in front of the man. 

"He lost _us_ three hours ago," Natasha growled the correction deep in her throat, as though the fact offended her. Nick hoped to hell it did offend her, because it sure as fuck offended _him_! 

"He lost you." Nick turned a chair to perch astride it, and steepled his fingers on the headrest before him. "A man who's only been awake in this century for about a year, has managed to ditch White Star's very best retrieval team on their home turf in a train station, in the middle of the day, over _urban wildlife_? Is that what you're telling me? 

She shrugged, glowering. "It was a big crowd. Panicking mobs are stupid, dangerous, and impossible to navigate. He took advantage of that."

"And raccoons, man," Barton agreed, miming a creature roughly Labrador sized. "Where did he even _get_ raccoons? Like, can you rent them by the hour?"

As if summoned (or more likely, listening at the door, as the analyst had a habit of doing,) Sousa the younger put her head into the room to announce, "Animal Control filed a pickup report on two adult raccoons and three juveniles in Grand Central this evening, Boss. Said they were nesting in the store room of the bagel place that closed down last month, and workmen probably disturbed them." 

She cut a glance at the noise of offended disbelief Barton made, but managed not to smirk as she nodded toward the bandaged hand. "They're also recommending that anybody exposed to them should probably get rabies shots, just to be sure."

Barton whipped the hand in question under the table, and scowled. Nick turned his head to glare the analyst back to her own business. 

Natasha turned her frozen bag to the colder side until the door shut again. Then she fixed Nick with an unrepentant stare and said, "Yasha told you Steve would not like the protection detail."

Nick gritted his teeth until the urge to shout had faded just a little. "Well, did Barnes bother to tell _Rogers_ that the only reason we can afford to let his ass run around New York at all is because SHIELD and HYDRA each think the other one killed him getting him outta the ice? Did he maybe tell Rogers that the game of Three Card Monty we had to play on those two agencies to keep them from dissecting him to harvest Project Rebirth's only success is what killed Stark and put Carter out with an injury she is never coming back from? Did he maybe explain what could happen the instant any agent of the Government figures out that Captain America's ashes are not buried at Arlington because he's walking around Manhattan _unescorted and without backup_? Oh, and did Barnes maybe tell him any details about HYDRA's little super soldier reeducation program while he was telling his best buddy all the rest of the facts of twenty-first century life?"

The pair eyed him for a long moment of silence, then Natasha stole the carafe from Barton and slugged back a long drink, while Barton leaned back in his chair and gave Nick the disingenuous stare he'd come to dread. It meant the archer was _thinking_.

"Due respect, sir," he said, taking the coffee back when Natasha passed it over. "I think you're maybe forgetting something important."

Nick laced his fingers together, hard. "Please: educate me."

"This is Captain America we're talking about here," Barton said, fiddling with the knotted gauze. "This is the guy who took the serum without knowing whether it would kill him or not, and this is the guy whose very first combat experience was when he went AWOL on a solo rescue mission _and succeeded_. Brought hundreds of POW's home, and left the whole prison camp in flames behind him, then he spends the rest of the war doing it again and again and again?" Barton shook his head. "Dude like that was never gonna stay quiet and play in the yard for very long, Boss. You were gonna have to introduce the world to him sometime or other." 

And yes. Yes, they'd known that, dammit. Damn near the entirety of White Star's legal department, and half of logistics had been working on how to make their recently rescued, and not nearly so dead as he was presumed, war hero into an actual, legal entity, capable of representing White Star to the world now that Margaret Carter couldn't do it anymore. It didn't help that Howard, in true mad genius fashion, had filed a last minute will with his lawyers just before shit got hot with SHIELD and HYDRA, naming Steve Goddamned Rogers as his sole heir now that his own son was dead. So they couldn't even change Cap's damned name without losing White Star's entire funding base to the inevitable squabble of second cousins and lost bastards!

They'd been _working on it_ , damn him. And now this -- Nick couldn't even send out teams to search Cap's few favorite haunts, in case one of his agents got made and led Hydra right to the man. Nick gave up and pinched at the budding headache between his eyebrows. 

"He'll come back," Romanoff opined after a moment. "I give him the weekend. Maybe a day or two longer, and then he'll come back. He won't leave Carter, and he won't leave Yasha. Just give him time to feel his point's been made, and he'll show up with bagels like nothing ever happened."

Nick cracked a glare in her direction. "You seem pretty confident of that."

To which she shrugged. "It's what I'd do."


	2. Tiara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a pattern is broken, and someone makes a try for the crown.

*** Tony ***

The thing about Mr. Thursday Night was, he had a pattern.

He'd show up at the White Eagle around 9:30 or 10:00, slipping quietly in as the last of the Corporate Happy Hour Slummers were staggering off to make their way back uptown now that they'd had their fill of risky for the night. First glance, he fit right in with them; hot, white, and rich -- money in every line of him, from the perfect tailoring of his bespoke suits, to the 'hours-of-workout-every-day' body he fit into them. Even the cut of his corn-gold hair was expensive -- the kind that a man could ignore, or abuse, and still look photo-spread ready with five minutes, a little water, and a comb. Tony knew better than most of the White Eagle's regulars what kind of money it took to get results as reliable as those. But Mr. Thursday Night's wore his gorgeous like he didn't notice it, and his money like it itched, and he never once tarried with the other Suits as they crossed paths in the taproom.

He always choose the shitty seat at the far end of the bar when he came in, never caring how close it was to the bathroom door, the wait station, and the gloomy make-out corner where every horny couple that thought they could get away with a quick blow or handjob without paying club cover for Downstairs went to get as busy as they could before Karl threw them out. He just ducked the swinging door, dodged the sloshing drinks, and blushed a furious rose whenever he needed to politely ignore some public indecency going on beside him. 

In a way, Tony came to realize, the chaos of his preferred seat seemed to calm the man as he sat there, week after week, nursed his drinks, and watched the slumming Suits gradually get outnumbered by the Twinks, Bears, Queens and Daddies who ruled this roost by night. And there he'd stay until last call; happily watching the people around him as if he himself were somehow invisible, and not the total focus of every horny queer in the place. with his blue eyes, his impossibly wide shoulders, chiseled jaw, and plush lips that looked built for sucking cock. He spent more time cheerfully scraping men and boys off his lap than any other club favorite Tony had ever seen come through the Eagle -- and Tony had started coming here when he'd left home after his mom's funeral in '91, so he'd seen a lot of darlings rise and fall from the White Eagle's favor. 

Hell, for a time, Tony had been one of them; all bad boy chic, runaway millionaire come slumming to shock the fuck out of Dear Old Daddy with as much raunchy sex as he could fit into a day... But Tony'd had too much to prove back then, with a gigantic, Howard-shaped chip on his shoulder, plenty of high-end designer baggage to sling around (new-minted as well as heritage stuff), and no real world practice at not being an utter douchebag. He hadn't been the darling for long, and if dear old Arnie hadn't taken him under his wing, Tony might've burned every bridge in the Village before he managed to figure out that it was him who was on fire.

This guy though, he was smooth. Gracious to everyone, with a wide, camera-ready smile that never got into his eyes for long; a good tipper, a better listener, and just shy enough to blush a charming pink whenever he got a little flustered. (That quickly became a competitive sport among the twinks, and Tony didn't even pretend not to be as entertained as all the rest.) Best of all though, Mr. Thursday Night never went home with anybody, and never let anyone, no matter how insistent or charming, lure him out onto the dance floor, or into a booth, or into the makeout corner.

And he never, not even once, turned up at the speakeasy entrance and asked to be allowed Downstairs.

Not that he hadn't been invited. Just about every week since he'd turned up, and usually more than once or twice a night, too. 

Neddy at the front door had even tried to pre-stamp his hand once, just as a favor to humanity, because apparently mankind _needed_ to answer the question of which side of a flogger Adonis (Neddy's nickname for him) preferred. Mr. Thursday Night (Tony's nickname for him, and one he clung to ferociously so as not to accidentally call the man something that would out him for the enormous nerd he'd spent decades trying to pretend he'd never been,) had allowed the stamp, and had bought the whole place a round that night, but hadn't gone near the back stairs.

When he'd come back the next week, he hadn't removed his gloves at the door. The mystery had endured, the betting pool had swollen, the debates as to top or bottom, kinky or vanilla, and Dom, sub, or switch continued as Mr. Thursday Night, (who was just asking for it if he kept on telling people his name was Steve) held to his pattern, sat in his corner, and spent his money like nobody in their right mind would wonder what brought him there, or what it would take to bring him somewhere more private.

Which made it kind of a _thing_ when, upon returning from a trip to the john around midnight one Saturday, Tony rolled up on Mr. Goddamned Thursday Night -- out of his Armani and poured into criminally snug jeans, a ball cap, and a little blue shirt that deserved hazard pay for what he was putting it through -- pulling out the chair and preparing to sit at Tony's table.

"Um, excuse me," Tony said, wheeling his chair close and nodding at the whiskey and soda he'd left waiting for him on the high top, "Aren't you kinda late?" Which, granted, was probably not the smoothest line of approach he might have taken, but sue him -- he was entitled a little slack on account of distraction.

"Oh," Mr. Thursday said, snatching the cap from his head and bouncing straight back up to his feet. "I'm so sorry! It's just it's so crowded, with the show going on upstairs tonight," he said, tipping a nod at the thudding bass bleeding down through the ceiling. "The bartender said you wouldn't mind if I joined you at your table, so..." his hands, broad and strong, with long fingers that gave all the right suggestions, flexed on the chair back as the man dithered to a halt, clearly ready to leave at Tony's slightest hint.

And wasn't _that_ a refreshing thing to find in the White Eagle? 

"Bartender said that, huh?" Tony took a glance at the bar, and found Karl leering from behind it, flashing Tony a completely unsubtle hand sign that might have stood for 'OK', or might have meant 'Hit That Till It Breaks'. He grinned, and nodded the gorgeous blond back toward his chair. "Well, he's not wrong. Take a load off." 

Hesitation. Wariness and some other, fleeting thing darkened those bright blue eyes for a second as they flickered over Tony, took in his clothing, his wheelchair, and returned to his face. "Are you sure? I don't want to intrude."

Tony laughed. "Oh, Honey! Are you kidding? These boys have been thirsting for you for months now, and when you finally step away from the bar, you come to me?" He waved his hands at the bar chair again, and then wheeled his own hot rod red ride up the slight ramp that marked this table as 'his', and tucked up to the high top with a grin. "You have to stay now -- if I buy you a drink and get your phone number tonight, they'll award me the Wicked Queen of the month award, and that comes with a goddamn tiara!"

Mr. Thursday Night's brows drew down a little, the sky blue went a little stormy, those lush lips thinned disapprovingly, and honestly, how the hell was that even fair? "Look," Tony pushed a little, snagging his drink and sipping, "park it, or flounce, your choice, but it's not like I need a second seat or anything. And if you keep giving me that face, I'll have no choice but to tell this whole bar that you're actually Captain America, and you're only hanging around this dive until you can bust us all for being flagrantly unpatriotic."

Well, it wasn't quite a freeze, exactly, but it did take a heartbeat before that elegant left eyebrow quirked up into a challenge. "Now why on earth would Captain America do a thing like that?" Mr. Thursday Night Who Was Gonna Need A New Name And Soon asked, slipping into the seat with an expression that he probably intended to be a deflecting smirk, but which read to Tony as 'intrigued despite himself'.

"Well," Tony temporized, waving at Karl to draw attention to the fact that his drink was now empty, and Mr. Thursday didn't even have one, "For one thing, the fact that he died in the 40's could lead to some conjecture as to what a wholesome boy from Brooklyn might think about a bunch of men drinking, carousing, and making time in a public house in the middle of Greenwich Village."

"That depends on how much a person thought they knew about Brooklyn in the 40's," the other man offered mildly.

Tony allowed the point with a nod, but rolled on anyhow. "But I think mostly he'd be somewhat appalled at having been turned into a poster boy for the modern Gay Pride movement without any say so of his own."

"Some people would say he signed up to be a symbol anyway, so what does it matter whose poster he's on?" Thursday's expression was mild as milk, but the challenge remained in the quirk of his smile, and it couldn't have got under Tony's skin quicker.

"No, he signed up to fight a war," Tony countered bitingly, "Some dumbass Senator decided to _make_ him into a symbol instead, and he had to go AWOL, commit mutiny, and rescue 359 men before anybody took that symbol seriously." 

Thursday sat back in his chair, his smile truing up just a little as he gave Tony and his sudden, uncomfortable self-awareness a searching stare. "Huh. Wouldn't have taken you for a Cap fan," he said after a moment.

Tony chuckled, and sucked the last of the alcohol from the ice left in his glass. "Well that's because I'm not, really. But I grew up with one, and there's only so many times you can hear a dead guy's life history before some of it starts to stick. Hey, you drink whiskey, right?"

"Irish," Thursday agreed with a nod as Tony turned to catch Karl's attention

"Ahoy, Barkeep!" Tony yelled over the din, drawing every eye in the place, "I'll have the Black Tiara of Envy, and two Jameson's on ice for me and my buddy whose name is ..."

"Steve," the adorable asshole answered, wry and sly and kissable, "Steve Rogers." 

The whole of the White Eagle's Saturday night crowd lost its everloving mind and began to scream in unison at the revelation of the coveted Last Name, and yeah, point to Mr. Thursday, because it was nearly a quarter of an hour before Tony could so much as look at that gorgeous face and the merry hell sparkling in those eyes, without breaking into giggles.

***

Tony didn't take him home that night.

To his own surprise, (and, he suspected, to Steve's surprise as well) he didn't even try particularly hard, beyond the offhand invitation they both seemed to expect once Karl shouted for last call, and they both realized they'd been talking all night. Steve shrugged it off with a bashfulness that Tony found somehow more charming than the gracious retreats he'd seen the man give other would be suitors before.

"It's okay," Tony shrugged, tapping his nearly empty glass against the tiara that was still sitting on the table. "I don't typically do hookup sex with strangers until I've had their phone number for at least a month."

Steve snickered and shook his head. "You really wanna put that thing on, don't you?" he asked, clear eyed and not wobbly at all as he shot the rest of his drink and capped the now-empty bottle. 

"Not until I've earned it," Tony answered, twisting in his chair to grab his phone out of the bag hanging off the back. "Now come on -- digits."

"I... uh, I don't. Have it. My phone," he said, evasive in all the wrong ways all of a sudden. Tony leveled his best ' _don't you lie to me bitch_ ' look over the lip of his glass, and Steve glanced up long enough to catch it. "I mean I don't have it with me," he clarified. "And it's a new one, so I don't have the number memorized yet."

Tony hummed, reached across to turn Steve's left hand to the light, and examine his ring finger for a tan line. "So you're on the run then, I take it?" he asked, and there was probably too much truth in the way the muscles tensed under Steve's skin for just a second before he gently took his hand back.

"Well, I've heard those things can be traced, you know," he bullshitted with a big grin, as if he knew Tony wouldn't be buying, but intended to shovel it anyway. "I don't want uh, Hydra to use it to find me while I'm here with you."

And Tony had to cackle at that. Hydra, indeed! "Yeah, that would be the worst possible way to blow your cover, wouldn't it, Captain?" Then he reached for Steve's hand again, and pulled a sharpie out of his bag with a grin. "Okay then, since you obviously need some tech support in this modern era, here's my number. You give me a call sometime, and I'll show you how to fix that phone so the bad old Nazis can't use it to find you."

Steve held still for it, the skin of his wrist so smooth and hot under Tony's fingers, that it was a trial make himself let go while he still had some cool to bargain with. The way Steve slid his hand out from under Tony's when he was done though -- slowly, gently enough to let the fingers drag and almost, almost tangle together on their way past -- that suggested that maybe Tony was doing better than he'd thought. "Carbonell?" Steve asked squinting at Tony's handwriting in the gloom. 

"Might be my real name, you don't know," Tony challenged, slipping his jacket on, and replacing his bag as Steve, Mr. Thursday Night, except miraculously here on a Saturday, hurried to stand like a sophomore when his date comes downstairs. And god, he was gorgeous -- high, wide, and handsome, and as tempting as every single terrible idea Tony had ever had in his life, with his bright, anxious eyes, and that adorable fucking wrinkle between his eyebrows as he wrung his ballcap between both hands.

"But if it isn't," Tony winked as he turned his chair toward the door and tipped the man a sarcastic salute, "it's damn sure a better alias than Steve Goddamn Rogers!"

He left the tiara behind on the table, figuring his odds of winning it fairly by next Thursday were looking pretty good.


	3. Looking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which pride is challenged, comfort is shared, and someone looks for what is lost.

*** James ***

_“Is he hiding in the garden after all, Natalia?”_ he asked, low and quiet in the darkened room. Beside him on the bed, Clint slept deeply and without his hearing aids in, but there was something about the streetlight halo lighting her hair to amber flame that called for Russian tongue and hushed, secret tones.

 _”Don’t be foolish,”_ she answered him as he’d spoken, only the ghosting light’s play over her hair making proof that she’d moved even enough to speak.

He slipped from the bed, taking care to tuck the blankets down around Clint first, lest the draught of chill wake him. Natalia did not turn as he padded near, but a moment after he stopped, she pressed away the last few milimetres of empty air between her back and his chest. He did not put his arms around her though, did not tempt the restless ghost of half remembered training sessions and other, sweatier moments stolen from the silence, and punished brutally upon discovery. That would never be comforting between the likes of them, the Widow and the Soldier, again.

Instead, he pressed his lips to her hair and murmured, _“They will not punish you for losing him. This is not like before.”_

Her warmth lifted from his chest as she turned a look of pure annoyance on him. _“I know that.”_ her teeth were flashes of angry white in the glower of her face. _“Would I have stayed with your precious White Star if it were like the Red Room in any real way?”_

He chuckled, leaned his metal shoulder into the wall. _“Long enough to kill me, if you couldn’t extract me willingly, I expect.”_ What a surprise that had been; his little Natalia, his deadly red Widow, turning up to rescue him from the custody of his rescuers, fully prepared to fight Howard, Peggy, and every agent they could muster in James’ defense. Even James himself had been ready to put her down then -- dreading it, yes, but certain it would have to be done. Lucky for them all, Hawkeye made a different call. Luckier still, the Red Widow’s conditioning turned out to be somewhat easier to break than the Soldier’s had been. 

_“He is a fool, you know; your friend.”_ Natalia said, leaning close again after a long minute. James didn’t answer. It was true, he suspected, but then again the same was probably true of all of them, together or apart. Who but fools would take on a secret war against enemies who had proven they’d stop at nothing, flinch from no crime, scruple no cost in their agenda? All soldiers were fools, at the core of things, but they were fools on which the world relied sometimes. 

_“He looks for a ghost in you, and he looks for a rival in me, and for a hidden threat in Fury,”_ she went on, challenging him to point out that she had looked for ghosts, rivals and hidden threats just the same after she’d decided to stay with White Star. He didn’t. That was a trap, and they both knew it. _“He spites the help of those who know the world better than he can hope to, and for what? For what? A sense of freedom? That he’ll buy with his life? What kind of idiot does such a thing?”_

James sighed when her pointed silence made it plain that last had not been a rhetorical question. _“He’s not looking for freedom, Natalia.”_

 _“What then?”_ she demanded. _“Stark gave him everything! The perfect Hero’s reward: the wealth, the businesses, the mansion, the woman he wanted, even you, polished up like he’d never let you fall to begin with!”_ she said it like spitting, and James held himself very, very still. _“Everything Steven Rogers could have wanted, served to him on a golden plate, and he just-”_

“Steve Rogers wanted none of that,” James cut in at last, only slightly surprised to hear the words roll out of him in English now. “Me like this,” he flexed his metal arm, and the plates whirred one against the other, flashing in the low light as they moved, “with a list of murders longer than I can remember to my name; Carter barely able to recognize him, and hardly able to move or speak when she does; all the rest, everyone else he knew, gone to time, old age and treachery while he waited to be found, or to die?” he shook his head hard, long hair fretting at his shoulders as he pushed back away from her. “The money Stark left him, the house, the business -- all that’s just dead men’s clothes, passed on at a wake. You take them to be polite, but that doesn’t mean you’re excited to wear them.”

“Yasha,” she started, turning, reaching. She stopped when he put his metal hand up, palm first between them.

“I’ll go,” he said, clipped and short. “I’ll find him, and I’ll bring him back. Then everyone can stop worrying.”

“Yasha, that’s not-“

“Ugh,” the bundle of blankets groaned, levering itself up so Clint could glare at both of them, tucking one hearing aid in as he huddled and scowled. “It is way too early for these Russian Dramatics. You,” and here, he pointed one callused finger at James, “Take it easy on Tasha. She’s not used to having nice things. And you,” the finger moved to target Natasha, “Quit acting like James is something we stole. If he was gonna dump us for Rogers, he’d have done that months ago.”

“No,” James said, not sure whether he was protesting or agreeing, “I can share each of you with the other. Rogers... if he wanted-” he did not say, _if he wanted me_ , but only barely. “If he wanted more than that, more than what both of you have, then he could not have it.”

Natalia’s look was skeptical, but then she was a Widow; words were her snares, her traps, and her weapons. Declarations weren’t anything but air. Clint though, gave a decisive nod, as though that fully settled everything. Then he thrust both his arms out of the blanket cocoon and made grabby motions at both of them. “Now come on. I want to get at least a few more hours of shut eye before Fury sends us over to comb through Stark Industries’ dirty laundry.”

Bucky paused, one knee on the bed as Natalia pushed past him and grabbed a double handful of Clint’s blanket pile. “Why would he do that? Steve’s hardly set foot in Stark Industries since the will was read. I thought Arbrogast and May were handling things over there.”

“Well it does make sense,” Natalia sighed, shoving Clint over mercilessly when he tried to fight her for the covers. “May had some eyes-only paperwork for him to sigh earlier that morning, so he did spend some time over at the SI den yesterday afternoon.”

“Heard Coulson talking with Fury about it down in the library earlier,” Clint agreed, budging over at last, and cuddling up to the long curve of Natasha’s body. “Current thought is that one of the bitter old timers got hold of his ear when Rogers went for lunch at the cafeteria.”

“And what, hurt Steve’s feelings so bad he had to run away and sulk?” James huffed, settling back into the bed again, “Have they _met_ him? Like, at all? Because the Steve Rogers I remember woulda been on the six o clock news for punching a corporate asshole in the kisser if he’d give him any lip.”

“Relax,” Natasha sighed, and tossed the blankets over him. “Nobody’s insulting his manhood. They’re just nervous about SI. Until they figure out the link between Stark’s son disappearing and Stane going AWOL in Afghanistan, the analysts are gonna be jumping at shadows over there.” 

And of course, when they put it that way, James found the idea of going politely back to sleep even less probable. The dangers of Hydra, its entanglement in SHIELD, these were nuances he understood, and could navigate like a shark in cold waters. The idea that something as mundane as corporate maneuvering could be what finally did Steve Rogers in? That was just insulting.

“Besides,” Clint gusted a deep, deflating kind of sigh, and flung one arm across Natalia’s ribs to curl over James’ metal elbow. “I figure Rogers is fine. He’s just out looking for what anyone looks for when they’ve lost everything; he’s looking for some sign of home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I didn't expect this pairing/tripling until boom: suddenly there it was, and now I won't lie, I love it more than just a little bit.
> 
> As always, thanks in advance for the comments and cheerleading -- they're what gives me life!  
> C


	4. Schooled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a call is made, a call is made, and a phone book is consulted.

*** Steve ***

"Jay Street Technical Arts, Good morning," said a bored and extremely British voice, and Steve froze where he stood. Actually pulled the cheap, pre-paid phone away from his ear and stared at it like the mistake had been the phone's doing.

"Hello?" the man said again, just beginning to sound annoyed. "Is anyone there?"

"Yes. Erm. Sorry," Steve checked the number on his arm one more time. "Is this 867 5083?"

"Yes," the man replied in exactly the same overly patient way that Peggy did when she thought Steve was being particularly dense. "You've rung the Jay Street Technical Arts Centre." There was a pause, while Steve sternly told his sinking belly not to be ridiculous, that Tony must've thought Steve was a cheating husband on the slide from a controlling wife, and so of course he hadn't given Steve his real number. He'd been stupid to imagine that after all these years, he could just -

"Were you looking for anybody in particular, sir?" the man on the phone prompted.

"Tony," Steve winced at the blurt, and looked hastily around the cafe. But nobody was looking at him, and nobody new had come into the place in the three minutes it had been since the last time he'd scanned for Hydra, Shield, or those agents Peggy's aide had assigned to 'escort him' wherever he went. He took a breath. "I was trying to reach Tony Carbonell."

"Ah," the man replied, slightly more pleasant now. "I'm afraid Mr. Carbonell is teaching a welding class this morning, and cannot be disturbed."

"Oh. Well, could I maybe call back after he's-"

"I'm afraid Mr. Carbonell will be quite busy today, sir," the man deflected so smoothly Steve just knew he had years of practice at it. "There's a luncheon meeting with the Centre's accountant, and in the afternoon, Mr. Carbonell teaches the drafting and robotics classes. Very popular, you understand. Perhaps if you'd like to leave your name and number, I could have him ring you once he's free?"

' _And once I've had a little time to look into you and see what you're about, young man,_ ' Steve mentally filled in what the chummy voice wasn't quite saying, and grimaced at his coffee cup.

One halfway intent Google search into the identity Howard's people had given him, and Steve knew his brief vacation would be over. Bucky's new girlfriend and that archer fella would know for sure that Steve's airline ticket to London, train tickets to Boston and Cardiff, bus tickets to upstate, Chicago, and Florida, and car rental for Hollywood were red herrings. (Assuming they'd been fooled by any of that in the first place -- a notion Steve was not taking for granted here.) And then they'd be back to shadowing Steve's every damned move again, and privacy be damned.

And Steve... well, he wasn't ready to throw in that towel yet. White Star Security might need him to be their public face now that Howard was dead and Peggy's health was too shaky to do the job, and maybe Steve owed it to them, given that White Star people had saved Bucky from Hydra and Steve from the ice, but by damn, he was gonna do it on _his_ terms.

And those terms by God were gonna include one damned night of freedom per week, even if Steve had to throttle somebody to make it happen.

"Sir?" The British man prompted, all ironclad politeness, blank and immovable, and damn it all!

"You know what? It's fine," Steve said, letting annoyance shave a hard Brooklyn edge onto his voice. "I'll just find him next time we're both at the club."

Then he hung up, steamed and frustrated and entirely too inclined toward feeling sorry for himself. But no, just... no. Tony Carbonell was a real name, and he'd given Steve a real number to reach him, and a man didn't bother with that if he wasn't open to at least an invitation. Steve Rogers had fought his way past 5 different army doctors with their red 4F stamps, past Gilmore Hodge and Chester Phillips and two hundred USO shows to get what he wanted! He wasn't about to let one nosy old secretary stop him going for it now.

"Jay Street Technical Arts Center," he repeated to himself. Then he grabbed his empty cup and plate, and headed back up to the counter to ask the girl there if they might have such a thing as a phone directory about the place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this one's short, Murderblossoms. I'll make up for it with another chapter tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy! And thanks in advance to those of you who pause to comment -- you give me LIFE!


	5. Ledger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is debated red versus black, losses against gains, and the merits of a bohemian steampunk ideal.

*** Pepper ***

“So we’re in the black this quarter,” Tony declared, tapping a finger on the spreadsheet, as though his enthusiasm would convince her. “And next month’s code writing and web design classes are already at max, so we’ll be good to go until summer.”

“Tony, you didn’t include your salary in these figures.” Pepper tapped her fingernail on the misleading bottom line without mercy.

He shrugged with one shoulder, and didn’t look at her. “What do I need a salary for, Pep? We’ve still got plenty to live on.”

By which, of course, he meant the ransom money; existing in a tenuously legal grey space between Edwin Jarvis’s loyalty and Tony Stark-no-its-Carbonell-now’s stubbornness. None of his kidnappers had lived to collect it, and Howard hadn’t lived to ask for it back either, and Howard’s estate seemed to have better things to think about than a stray ten million gone from petty cash. For now, anyway. But instead of picking at the thread of _that_ old fight, she chose a newer one.

“Your time is worth paying for,” she told him, trying for earnest rather than exasperated and ready to smack him. “You’re a genius, Tony! Your mind operates on a world-changing level, and you know it! The ARC battery alone-”

“Isn’t gonna do anybody any good now that Stark Industries has the patents on it,” he cut back. Then he sighed and rubbed at his cheek with grubby fingers. “Look, Pep, I know you want things to go back to the way they were before,” and there was a hitch in his voice there, a moment of careful word choosing that made Pepper’s heart twist inside her. _Before Afghanistan,_ it whispered, and _before my father’s right hand man stole the company we built from the ground,_ and _before I was broken_ , but the words, when he found them, were far more neutral. “Before we lost ARC, but it’s just not gonna happen. We haven’t got the resources to try and take Stark Industries to the mat over those patents, and we’re kinda way too late to be resisting the takeover at this point.”

_But I tried,_ Pepper wanted to shout, to pound the table and sweep the papers, the cheap laptop, and the remains of their lunch to the floor. She’d tried to fight it. Even with Tony missing and maybe dead, and Ivan unravelling inside his skin from the stress, Pepper had tried with all her might to keep Stark Industries from swallowing ARC Energy Solutions. She’d tried everything she could think of, even the very last thing either of her partners would have wanted her to resort to.

But it turned out that Howard, once she’d bullied her way in to confront him, hadn’t known anything about the hostile takeover. He’d known that Tony was missing, of course, and said he had ‘his best guy on it’ (the memory of those words still made her spitting mad,) but as to her accusations, all he’d said was that he would talk to someone in legal about it and get back to her. 

No one from Stark Industries got back to her. Not until it was time for she and Victor as the remaining partners, to sign over ARC, its patents, its holdings, its equipment, and everything they’d built together to its new owners, and then take their consolation prize retirement packages, and go home. She’d drunk for a week, locked herself in her apartment, and cried pretty much anytime she wasn’t asleep or raging at ghosts. Ivan had drunk for a week, assaulted three Stark Industries shareholders, and gotten himself sent to jail for attempted murder. And their shared dream of a clean-energy, saving-the-world, revolutionizing-medical-technology legacy had disappeared into the guts of Stark Industries, never to be seen again.

But it wasn’t fair to use any of that against Tony now -- not with everything he’d lost just finding a way to come home at all. And it also wasn’t fair for Tony to be pouring his genius and his remaining fortune into a flyspeck trade school that comped more tuition than it collected, and hadn’t got even a distant dream of being accredited. It wasn’t that the Tech Arts Center wasn’t doing good work within the community, of course, it was just that Pepper couldn’t shake the certain knowledge that Tony was meant for _better_.

“You wouldn’t have to fight it at all, if you’d-”

“No.”

“You still have eighteen months to contest the will,” she protested, frustrated and angry, despite her intention not to be. “I was at the reading, and it said explicitly that if Tony Stark showed up to contest within three years of Howard’s death, the entire estate would revert to-”

“Pepper,” Tony reached across the table and captured her hand in one of his. “Pepper, I can’t do that. You know why I can’t. We’ve talked about this.”

She sniffed hard against the infuriating urge to cry, and pressed on. “Stane hasn’t been seen in nearly a year, Tony. They’ve been _searching_ , and he hasn’t crawled out from under any rock they’ve kicked.”

“And even if he is really dead and gone, we still don’t know if he acted alone,” Tony answered, too gentle for her rising temper. “We don’t know if he was the mastermind, or somebody’s catspaw, but either way, putting my foot into Stark Industries now...” he shook his head. “I don’t wanna make guns, Pep.”

“You wouldn’t have to make guns, Tony. Howard died owning more than 73% of SI’s stock. That would give you enough of a controlling share that you could tell them to make bricks for children’s hospitals and get away with it!”

“No.” He withdrew his hand gently, but with a finality that made Pepper just want to grind her teeth. “I don’t want to wrap my life around the company that killed my father.”

“Some nut with a gun and a grudge killed your father, Tony!”

“He’d been dead inside for years when that happened,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “Look, just give me this for now, Pepper, okay?” A sweep of his hand took in the tiny, rumpled office, crammed with books and tools and crazy ideas Tony would never stop turning out. “Give me my crappy little steampunk bohemian ideal for a year or two. I might go back to the Corporate Jungle one day, sure, but for right now I think I’ve earned a break.” And here, he flashed her a wry, sad smile that broke Pepper’s building rage and her heart into tiny splinters. “Just give me some time to get my feet under me first, okay?”

“That’s terrible, Tony!” But she was laughing even as she groaned, and surrendering even as she gathered the empty takeout containers to take to the trash. She’d gone to the mat once to defend him, them, their company, their dreams, and Pepper knew she’d do it again in a heartbeat... but not if Tony wasn’t fighting for it with her.

“So how’s Happy doing these days?” Tony asked, scooping the paperwork into a haphazard pile. 

“He’s fine,” she answered fondly as she got her coat and bag, “Coaching boxers over in Queens these days, but he still does a little security work now and then. He asks about you too. You should really make time to see each other, you know?”

“Yeah, well they should really give me another day in the week, too,” he answered smartly.

She laughed, and bent to kiss his cheek. “You’d only fill it up with classes and tinkering if they did.”

“Well yeah, who wouldn’t?” He threw after her as she headed for the door, still chuckling.

“I’m betting that list would start with Jarvis, and go on through just about everyone you know, Tony,” she answered.

“Peter would though, and Hank. Maya, Gwen, Bruce too, maybe.” 

“Sure, but anyone who _wasn’t_ a socially challenged science nerd would- oop!” She yelped a little and grabbed the doorjamb as her shoe skidded on something just at the threshold. Pepper bent to pick it up, prepared to gripe at Tony’s housekeeping, but instead of being a stray receipt or scribbled class note, the paper she’d slipped on turned out to be a tidy little envelope, sealed at the back, and with Tony’s name written on the front in an elegant cursive hand.

“What’s that?” Tony asked, rolling up behind her.

“Love note from one of your students?” she asked with a smirk as she turned the square over and spotted the doodle scribbled just where a seal would go -- three concentric circles shaded cleverly in pen-scratch, surrounding a star. “Someone knows what you like.”

Tony didn’t answer, just plucked the envelope from her hands, slipped a long file under the flap and cut the top, his expression oddly intense, as though he was equal parts alarmed, and excited, and couldn’t tell which one to feel first. Then he dropped the small card into his hand, and flipped it open to reveal two lines of text, a number, and a signature.

“Sonofabitch,” Tony breathed, and for a moment, Pepper was more than a little alarmed herself, but then the smile broke like sunrise across his astonished expression. “Son of a _bitch_! That tiara is so totally mine!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There -- more information many of you've been wishing for, regarding what happened to put Tony where he's at. There's more, of course, but you'll have to wait for it. Love as always to all my commenters -- you're what keeps me going!


	6. Callout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is noted location, distance, time of travel, and who picks up the check.

*** Tony ***

“So,” Tony said brightly the instant he heard Steve’s hello on the other end of the line. “Are we going with ‘creative and determined’ or ‘creepy and stalkerish’ here? I can’t quite decide.”

“I...” Steve stammered, just the right side of flabbergasted to put Tony’s singing nerves a little to rest. “Stalkery? What?”

“Well, you did turn up at my place of work, sneak in to slip a note under my office door, and sneak back out without any of the staff or the students spotting you,” Tony chuckled, idly spinning a wrench in circles on his desktop, “And let me tell you, we have some smart students and paranoid staff members around here, so that takes some doing for a man your size.”

“Oh geez, Tony no!” Steve cut in again, flustered and rushing over the words. “I just... You said you wanted a phone number, back when... and I didn’t have it that night, so I just-“

“So instead of leaving the number with Jarvis, or putting a note in my message box, you decided you had to come out here and scout the terrain?”

"You didn't have a message box-"

"Yes I do, genius! It's called 'e-mail'!"

"Well you didn't give me your e-mail!"

"Well I didn't give you my home address, either!"

"Home...?"

"I live upstairs from the damn Center, Steve!" Tony realized he was shouting at the phone and stopped. "Which... you probably didn't realize." He hadn't _actually_ intended to chase the guy off, it's just something in the stubbornly defensive tone got Tony's back up quicker than any 'friendly drink' with his old man, God damn his soul, had ever done. 

There was a beat of silence, some loud public rustle filling up the air until Steve coughed once, and sighed. “I didn’t think he’d give it to you. My number. Fella who answered the phone sounded like a real hard case.”

And no, that hangdog note in the man’s voice did not make Tony’s flinty heart suddenly turn to goo. Not at all. Especially since he knew damned good and well how protective Jarvis could be ever since Afghanistan, and there was a good likelihood that he might not have given Tony Steve’s number for several days. Or longer, if the ‘Old Friends’ Tony wasn’t supposed to know Jarvis still kept up with from his Loyal Stark Employee days had trouble digging up a profile that looked kosher to the wary old bulldog.

“Well anyway, I’m sorry I overstepped,” Steve went on, audibly squaring himself up against the rejection he thought he had coming. “I promise I won’t bother you aga-“

“Oh hell no,” Tony cut him off, savage and grinning over his desktop collection of bills, biochem tracts, coffee cups, and lesson plans. “You don’t get to ninja your GQ ass all up into my business, drop your digits on a note, then backflip off of the roof and disappear into the night.”

“Backflip off the... I... what?”

“No way, Poster boy!” Tony went on. “I’ll be the one to decide when you get to fuck off out of it, and it won’t be before you’ve given me a fair shot at that tiara! Now where the hell are you?”

“Erm. Right now?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “No, last week. Of course right now! It sounds like a bank vault full of monkeys and washing machines over there. Is that dubstep I hear?”

“I ... have no idea what that is,” Steve answered, halfway between adorably bewildered and annoyed. Then the unmistakable hollow crackle of a loudspeaker announcement echoed over the line, giving it away.

“Are you on the subway, Steven?” Tony asked, incredulous. 

Steve’s voice came back with a defensive, Brooklyn edge to it. “Nothin' wrong with ridin' the subway, Anthony.” Which was _not_ something Tony expected to hear from a man who owned at least 3 custom made suits, but Tony let that slide.

“Yeah, well make sure you don’t lose your wallet before you get that ass of yours back down here to Jay street,” Tony laughed. “I’m starving, and my favorite Thai place is just down the block. If you hurry, we can beat the dinner rush.”

“Thai?”

“What’s wrong, you don’t like Thai food? Who doesn't like Thai food?”

There came that rustling sound again, and Tony could just picture one of those broad, square hands scrubbing back over Steve’s hair as he sighed. “I. I have no idea. Tony, can I just make sure I understand you here? You called to yank my ear for showing up at your place uninvited, and because you’re mad at me, you want me to buy you dinner now?”

Which, when you put it that way... still sounded about right. The only other thing Tony had intended to do with the evening was to go over the latest Extremis data to see if he could help Maya out with her little exploding posy problem, and frankly that was a cold second to the idea of seeing Mr. Thursday Night sweating and flushing over a big bowl of tom yum goong. “Gold star to Captain America,” Tony grinned. “How far out are you?”

There was another pause, then, “Erm. Ten minutes. Less, maybe.” 

And Tony had to laugh. One of the reasons he’d been able to afford to buy the Centre after he’d come back from Afghanistan to find his company tanked, his father dead, and all his patents tied up in the post-death ‘because I say so, young man’ of Howard’s estate, was that the building was nearly ten minutes from the nearest subway station. That, and the lack of an elevator were the only things that brought it down into Tony's price range.

“I just hadn’t gotten on the train yet,” Steve came back, all huffy as he correctly divined that he’d been busted lingering about close while he waited for Tony to call him. “I could maybe ride around for half an hour if that’d make you feel safer though!”

“Ooh, salty!” Tony laughed again. “Just for that, you’re buying.”

“Thought I was buying anyhow,” Steve grumbled, clearly for show.

“Oh, you are, gorgeous,” Tony assured him, still grinning. “Meet you out front in ten,” Then he ended the call before Steve’s flirting cost him any more of the precious time he was going to need to get himself cleaned up and find a shirt that didn’t look like he’d been building robots in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Getting back around to the main pairing at last. Another quick one today, Death-lilies. I'll do updates daily now, until I've got the whole thing done, then I'll post the balance in one fell swoop. So either way, you'll not have too long to wait for more of this story.
> 
> Thanks again to all of you who are commenting -- Your words give me life!


	7. Traces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is discussed the value of a sharp dressed man, and the proper care of shoes.

*** Daisy ***

Fury’s office door opened not two seconds after she’d tapped on it, and the man himself, all scowl and eyepatch and matching blacks, filled up the gap. “Johnson,” he said after a single glance. “What is it?”

She didn’t dither, she absolutely did not. “I was looking for Mr. Coulson,” she answered, brandishing her tablet by way of excuse for interrupting what had probably been some kind of world saving, evil-confounding business, to judge from the cold-water glare Ms. Hill was giving Daisy over the Acting Director’s shoulder. “Thought he might be in here with you?”

“He’s gone to the SI campus,” Hill answered, “Cell won’t reach him there, but Active Com will if it’s impor-”

“That the tracking report on Rogers?” Fury cut in, eyeing the tablet, which showed a rough map grid, a red dot, and a set of coordinates. She nodded, and he stepped back abruptly, the door’s wide swing equal parts invitation and command, and all over drama. Still, she followed him in and shut the door -- it wasn’t like anyone at White Star HQ was in the dark about the Missing Rogers Problem, but there was a good chance there would be yelling involved in this particular report, and nobody liked an audience for a telling off.

“Sir, ma’am,” Daisy said, setting her tablet on the Director’s desk, and activating the holo projector above it. “I activated the codes for six tracking devices this evening. Three pinged back, but two of those went out pretty much at once, and haven’t responded since then, but it’s not hard to cripple those nano-gel trackers with a little salt and water. Even some kinds of soap will drain the batteries down to useless, so...” She caught a restless movement from Hill in the corner of her eye, and hastily let the details drop. 

“This last one is a larger unit though, insulated battery, memory chip, active response protocols.” She tapped at the map grid hanging in the air, turning it for a better angle. “It survived whatever he did to the rest of them just fine, and according to its onboard, it’s been sitting in the same place since about 8:20 Friday night. They haven’t moved in twenty four hours.”

“God dammit,” Hill breathed. 

Fury pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed like a man doomed. “I want analysis on this location. Full insertion writeup and history in half an hour, and get Delta over there to see if we can get eyes on whoever’s got him-”

“Um, sir, ma’am, waitaminute?” Daisy waved both hands, palms out before her. “I said the tracker hasn’t moved. Like, not even shifted attitude or slid a little bit. Like it’s still sitting exactly where he put it down when he took his shoes off.” Then she leaned over the desk, and tapped the grid map over to street view so they could all get a good look at the building around that single red blip, and the hand lettered sign that hung over the door. 

_Good Karma Vintage/Resale_.

“I already did the surface check on the place,” she went on. “Three year old lease; building owner’s been living on site since the 80’s; neither she nor the shop owner have any obvious ties to known Hydra or Shield affiliates. I think it really is a used clothing store.”

Hill cursed again, staring at the ceiling as if praying for strength. Fury, though, gave Daisy a searching glance, and scooted her tablet a little bit closer to her on the desk. “Can you get me the shop’s transaction records for the past three days?” he asked.

She couldn’t quite keep the skeptical look off her face. “Sure, assuming they use computerized inventory tracking software, and I can figure out which one, but this address is in Brooklyn, sir. Hipsters kinda have this ironic love affair with all things crusty and low tech, so I’d give even odds on this place’s books being, like, actually in _books_. In which case, not so much with me getting them.” 

Fury turned to his lieutenant. “Get Barnes on it. I want proof this was a willing sale before we move in to recover. What time did the tracker go still?” 

“Ah. 8:20, sir,” Daisy said, caught offguard by how very human her top-bosses seemed when stress had worn them thin. “Ten minutes before the closing time listed on the website.”

“Son of a bitch,” Hill grumbled. “That was deliberate. He bitched about those shoes when Phil brought Stark’s tailor in -- said they didn’t look like a thousand dollars worth of leather. We couldn’t get him to decide on anything until we made the tailor stop talking up the money, but by then he knew. So assuming he wore the cheap suit to SI today, Rogers just gave away six grand in Italian couture tailoring, in trade for used jeans and sneakers!”

Which, when you put it like that, Daisy could kind of see what had Hill so pissed off, but still. If the guy wasn’t comfortable with the fancy clothes, why had they got them for him in the first place?

Fury though, wasn’t interested in Hill’s diatribe at all. He was peering at the street view like it was a crystal ball. “Rogers is worth more,” he said distractedly, turning the view to see farther down the street.

“You sure of that, Sir?” Hill came back, sour and mad, and that made Fury look at her at last.

“You have something you need to say?” It was no invitation Daisy would’ve ever taken, but she guessed Hill knew her way around the Acting Director’s minefields after all the time they’d worked together.

She boosted her chin, squared her shoulders like she was facing a firing squad. “Getting Rogers has already cost us more than any other op we’ve run,” she said, all defiance. “He cost us Stark, and he cost us Carter, her entire security detail, and we’re still figuring out how many covers were burned getting him into our hands. And for what?” her hands broke formation, a futile, fluttering gesture that seemed to speak more of distress than rage. “What did those losses buy us aside from a famous name we can’t let him use? It got us a twitchy, pig headed relic of a vet with PTSD and survivor’s guilt decades deep, whom we can’t even send for counseling, in case someone leaks! I don’t call that a good return on investment, sir!”

Not what Daisy would’ve called a fair assessment, but she bit her lip and made like a hole in the air. After all, it _had_ been a massive op, and it had pulled every single one of White Star’s people far out of their comfort zones, and there had been more than a couple times when it looked like critical and absolute failure was in the cards. Even though Director Stark and Agent Barnes had both made deliberate targets of themselves in Hydra’s crosshairs, none of them had expected the car bomb that took out Director Carter and her escort. 

But it didn’t seem fair to lay the price of all that on Steve Rogers’ head either. After all, he hadn’t asked anybody to do it.

Fury let the silence hang for a long moment after Hill finished speaking. Then he tipped his head a little to the side, and regarded his deputy over the steepled point of his fingers. “You done?” he asked.

And Hill answered, “Sir.” in a way that somehow translated into ‘I could go on, but I figure I’ve dug myself deep enough for now.’

“Stark and Carter both knew what they were risking with this op. They both knew how hard Pierce, Ross, and Garrett would fight to keep Rogers, and they both knew very well what it could cost them personally, and they never once flinched. Hell, Howard even rebuilt his will expecting that this might be the op where Hydra finally killed him, and you damn well _know_ what a chickenshit that man was under fire.”

Hill chuckled, as if the joke pained her, but nodded all the same. 

“Now I can’t order you to put your faith in Captain America if you haven’t got it to give, but I can and will ask you to dig deep and find a little bit for the ones who recruited you to White Star’s cause in the first place.”

“That would be you, sir,” Hill answered with a brief, wry smirk.

Fury answered with one just like it. “And I say he’s worth it. Maybe it doesn’t seem like it now, but let him get his bearings, and he’ll be the best asset we’ve ever had.”

“ _You_ are a seasoned field agent, sir. You’re a spy. We all are. And what we’re doing here, the war we’re fighting is a cold one, not like the one he remembers. There’s precious little room in this game for Grunts.”

 _Ouch,_ Daisy thought, trying not to wince.

Fury just smiled though, unlaced his fingers, and tipped his head back to nod. “Well, that may be true, but I invite you to think real hard about the fact that the Grunt in question managed to ditch the very best protection detail we employ -- which is made up of our best spies -- and he did it while he was scrapping every one of the trackers he wasn’t supposed to know were in his suit, and ditching those pricey shoes you’re so worried about.”

Hill didn’t look happy about that either, but she gave the nod they all knew she was expected to before she headed for the door. “Anything else, sir?”

“Update Coulson on the trackers,” Fury nodded, reaching over to scoop Daisy’s tablet off his desk. “And get Barnes in here too. Johnson?” It took Daisy a moment of watching Hill shut the door behind her to realize that last was meant for her, and when she did, she found the Acting Director’s gaze fixed on her over the tablet in his hand, like a cat watching a mousehole. “What do you have to add to this discussion?”

Ah. So her ‘keep still and pretend to be as inscrutable as Coulson’ act hadn’t worked. Okay. Maybe May would be a better one to emulate in the future. Daisy coughed, fidgeted a little, and then reached out to accept the tablet from his hands. “I think thaaaat maybe if you told Rogers you had that kind of faith in him, he might feel a little more okay about what you need him to do? Like, if he thought that White Star needed him for more than just going to meetings, and writing out the checks, and shaking hands with important people, he might not feel so much like running away?” 

He gave a slow blink that could have been acknowledgement, or a warning. She plunged on anyway. “And maybe if you’re gonna put a depression era kid from Brooklyn in thousand dollar shoes? You should probably not put our best trackers in them, because now we’re gonna have to go buy them back from that vintage shop before she sells them to someone who’se likely to take them through an airport and figure out what’s really in there.”

This time when he slowly closed his eye, it stayed closed. “Go home, Johnson,” he said.

And so she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I used Skye. I’m not sorry, she’s an awesome character. As usual, once you're back from the movie, come and speak to me in the comments, my apple trees, my whippoorwills -- I value your thoughts!


	8. Climbing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which scars are measured in less than twenty questions, and the matter of the missing elevator is explained.

*** Tony ***

“So he’s just standing there, waiting for the old man to stop yelling, right?” Steve said, nearly wheezing with the struggle of telling the story without dissolving into laughter "And soon as the guy takes a breath, James gets right up into his face and says “You should be ashamed of your filthy mind, sir! These women are our sisters, and the goat belongs to their grandmother!”

“Sisters!” Tony gasped, chest heaving. “To their! Did ... did he still have the-“

Steve nodded. “Lipstick! All over ‘im! They all did!”

“Even the guy with the-” Tony mimed an enormous mustache, and Steve’s hair flopped about as he nodded wildly again.

“Bright...Pink!” he managed before the laughter overcame them both again.

Tony let it come, clenching side, watering eyes, and all, wondering how long it had been since he’d let himself laugh like this, openly, loudly, unafraid... and more importantly, for joy instead of for show. Not since Afghanistan, definitely, but before that, Tony had mostly spent his time with Vanko, who as far as Tony knew didn’t actually know how to laugh, and with Pepper, whom Tony had been desperately courting on many levels. Jarvis was good for a bit of dry sarcasm, of course, but after Ana’s illness and the split with Howard, the old man’s jokes came less frequently. Maybe back in college, with Rhodey... well. 

Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to do that math, really, and there was something about Steve -- some watery relief to his giggles, some lingering edge of pain beneath the tears in his eyes -- that suggested that he wouldn’t much want to show his work on that equation either. 

“So... So about this time the goat’s had enough...” Steve soldiered on at last. “Bites the hell outta Tim’s hand, knocks the pub table right over onto Pinky and Jimmy, and kicks the old man right in the goolies. Then it’s up the stairs and headed for the street, and Jones... Jones just... opens the damn gate and lets it go!” He wiped at his eyes with his knuckle, still grinning. “Far’s I know nobody ever caught the mean old thing either. I wound up paying half my packet for the month just so the old guy’s sons wouldn’t go for the Shore Police, and to this day, I have _still_ never tasted goat. Most expensive dinner I’ve ever paid for though!”

“It's worth the wait. You should totally make those assholes take you for Carribbean sometime,” Tony said without thinking, then mentally kicked himself as he watched the mirth bleed out of Steve’s eyes in two seconds flat. They'd been soldiers. Of course they'd been soldiers. And soldiers die. And other soldiers have to live on without them. 

“Shit,” he blurted as Steve looked away, smile frozen in place. “Shit, I’m sorry, Steve, I didn’t think.” He reached across the table, snagged Steve’s hand and held on.

“It’s fine, Tony,” Steve answered after a silent moment of staring at their hands. Then he licked his lips and turned his wrist to bring their palms together on the table. “I’m fine, I promise. It’s just... one moment we’re all alive and doing okay, and just a year later... well, there’s only two of us now.” He stared at the scarred table, and a crease dug deep between his brows. “And James... some days I wonder how much of himself he still has left after... after his capture.”

It was hard for Tony not to flinch at those words -- the implication behind them hit a lot closer to home than Tony had been ready for in his moment of outreach -- but he’d thought he managed it. Until Steve’s fingers tightened on his, and those blue eyes were suddenly locked on, wide and worried. 

"He." Tony swallowed a ghostly mouthful of sand and granite dust, blood and cordite smoke. "He was a POW?" The words staggered getting past his numb lips.

"Yes, he was," Steve said evenly, and began to rub his thumb back and forth across Tony's knuckles, circling each one as he went, as though to keep him present at the table, anchored from the past that was prickling like high desert frost across Tony's skin. "He came home just before Christmas last year, and they say he's making great strides, considering."

The laugh that cracked out of Tony then was a brittle thing. "They always say that."

He felt Steve's nod in the subtle vibration of his arm, though the thumb never stopped its restless process. "I suspect it's mostly true, too. Can't be easy, coming back from torture."

Tony yanked his hand back, flexing his fingers out wide on the table for a moment. "It's fine," he bit out as Steve began to stammer an apology. "It's... Don't. Just let me..." He snagged his glass, mostly ice now, with tea and sweet milk clouding the dregs, and tipped it back to slurp some of the ice between his teeth. The crunch of it fracturing as he chewed helped Tony bring his heart rate back down to sane levels again.

"It wasn't my back," Tony was usually better at letting silence wear itself out, but with his nerves singing and adrenaline charging through his chest, the urge to babble was irresistible. "You're too damn polite to ask, but I know everybody wonders why I'm in the damn chair."

"Tony, I don't need you to tell me if it's none of my-"

"Well it's _not_ your damned business, but you're kind of scarily perceptive, and you'll probably guess the rest anyway if I don't, so can we just go ahead and get this part over with?" He was shouting again. Well, not shouting, no, but speaking loud enough that the conversational din from the other few tables in the tiny restaurant quieted around them. He forcibly held Steve's gaze and did _not_ let it bother him. This was New York. People shouted in public twenty times a day, and if they could ignore it then, they could damned well ignore it now.

Steve stared back at him, sober and unmovable, his hand still gently curled, palm up on the table where Tony had abandoned it. Then he gave a single nod, and clearly settled down to wait. And shit. Now Tony really did have to figure out what to say. He stared at Steve's hand, thoughts churning, until those fingers flexed wide again -- an invitation, and one he was surprised to find himself taking. His own hand was trembling like a bird as he let Steve's broad fingers curl around it.

"Want me to guess?"

Tony shook his head. "Twenty questions ain't near enough, Cap," he laughed, tongue numb and cold against his lips. "Few years back, I went to Afghanistan to do a technical stint with Doctors Without Borders. My... I'd designed a low-cost, portable dialysis machine with a new kind of power supply, and I needed to be sure the clinicians understood how it worked, and what to watch out for before I just left it with them." He licked his lips again. "It was new tech. Not experimental, but not like anything else anybody was using. You can't just ship that kind of thing through the mail and hope nobody screws it up, right?"

Steve nodded, watching, silent.

"Well. It was a civilian venture, not military. We weren't there to fight the war, we were there to help people survive it, and we went by civilian transport all the way, so we wouldn't be a target for insurgents, you know?" He smirked, rubbing a hand on his pants. "Only it turns out the I was a target anyway. They had... This outfit called the Ten Rings. Somehow they got the design specs for my machine. For the power source. They wanted me to weaponize it."

There were a million savage questions in Steve's eyes, and Tony watched him sort through them all before landing on, "How long?"

"Three months," Tony said, the words feeling something like relief as they escaped him. "Then the prototype blew the whole cave system to rubble. Killed everyone inside it but me, and one other doctor they'd kidnapped. A trauma surgeon who'd specialized in cardiac..." he flinched away a sudden flash of Yinsen's face; battered, dusty, smiling. Dying. 

"Yinsen's nephew came to the camp a few days after the cave in, looking to pay the ransom. He found me and his uncle's body instead. Got people from his village to come back and dig me out, and they did their best for me, but Gulmira was so deep in hostile territory that it was another month before anybody with more medical skill than the local midwife could have a look at me. Then another two months after that before they could get word to the UN that I was even still alive. By that time the bones in my legs and pelvis had already started to heal up wrong."

"I'm sorry," Steve said, soft with regret.

Tony laughed. "What, that's it? No suggestions? No invasive questions about what flashy new treatments I might not have tried yet?"

"Do you normally hang around with assholes, or have I somehow given you reason to think I'm one of them?" Steve bit back, but he didn't let Tony's hand go. "It sounds like a terrible experience, and a lot of pain, and no, I don't pity you for it, but I'm sorry you had to go through it, okay?"

_Oh cupcake, you don't know the half of it!_ Tony kept that thought, and the hysterical laughter that went with it to himself though. Twenty questions wasn't nearly enough to scratch the surface of all the rest, either.

Instead, he took a deep breath, and pasted on a smile that felt like it was in the neighborhood of genuine. "Well, I might've been raised by assholes in the wild," he admitted. "And in periods of stress, I've been known to revert a bit. Sometimes I even bite."

"My tribe," Steve grinned, positively wicked for an instant, then his gaze slipped past Tony's shoulder as Somboon came up to the table, his apron in his hand, and an apologetic smile on his face. This time it was Steve who yanked his hand back.

"Mr. Tony, you need anything else? We gotta close now,” Somboon said, adding, "It's Sunday," when he saw Tony frown and check his watch. 

"Thanks for being patient with us," Steve cut in smoothly, his charming Poster Boy face back in place as he took the bill with one hand and dug his wallet out of the pocket of his jeans with the other. "We're sorry to have kept you so long, but it was a really lovely meal."

Tony had always despised smalltalk, from as early as he could remember his mother trying to drill it into his head for her big fancy dinners. When he'd struck out on his own after her death, Tony had gleefully refused to attend any event that might require him to fill it up with that kind of polite and cheerful verbal diarrhea. But that didn't mean he couldn't see Steve's skill at it. He complimented with his eyes, and smiled as if for a camera, and his idle chatter was just as impeccable and hollow as it had been back in those first few nights when the man had shown up to turn every head in the White Eagle.

It was a shield, Tony realized, watching Steve pay the bill in cash -- a thing he hadn’t often seen back when he'd had more money than he could care about, but saw all the time now that he lived around people who worried about money all the time. The courtesy, and charm, even those cardboard smiles that almost, _almost_ made it to the man’s eyes, but couldn’t shift the enormous thing already there; it was all a shield that Steve picked up every time he needed to deflect... what? Attention? Questions? Meddling? Pity?

It shouldn’t have been a revelation. Tony had his own way of wrapping himself up in his genius like a suit of armor, and using it to buzz circles around anyone who wanted to get too close to the scars he'd rather the world didn't know about. To blast holes in anybody who wouldn’t take the warning and back off. He knew a thing or two about deflection, but... but there was something enormous about Steve doing it, some vast and secret thing Tony couldn’t, for all his genius, get the shape of straight in his head.

He was still musing on that, distracted and more than a little grateful for it, when Steve let the shop door swing shut behind them, and asked, "Do you want a hand? With the chair, I mean," he added in answer to Tony's perplexed look. "Hill grade's not that steep, but it is up the whole way back."

"Nope," Tony said with a firm headshake as he dug out his phone and unlocked it to engage the chair's Micro RT propulsor. "People being right up close behind my chair makes me cranky. I'd rather you walk in front."

Steve's expression was hung halfway between awed and delighted as he watched the chair start rolling gently forward up the hill without the aid of Tony's hands at all. But he only answered with, "That seems rude to me. Mind if I walk beside you?"

Tony chuckled. "What, in the street?"

"I've stepped in worse overseas," Steve shrugged, tucking his hands into the pockets of his bomber jacket with a grin that hid almost enough to be taken at face value. But now Tony knew better, and the knowing wasn't all that helpful, when taken against the mysteries of this quiet, towering man.

So he fetched out one of his better naughty grins and said, "If you've ever used the White Eagle's bathroom, you've stepped in worse there, too. But come on," he edged his chair a bit to the side and beckoned Steve to step up beside him. "I'd rather have you loom over me from the side than be responsible for ruining those shoes of yours."

Steve winced and glanced down, like he'd forgotten what was on his feet, then he cut that glance over Tony's hand, weighted with something tentative and shy, and goddammit, how was that even fair? "Come on, Captain," Tony urged, leaning over to grab for the man's sleeve and tug. "Prove you can follow orders, and get up here!"

"Follow orders?" Steve laughed, but let himself be drawn up onto the sidewalk at last, "And here I thought you knew all about Captain America."

"Well maybe Cap never met an order he wasn't ready to buck," Tony allowed, sliding his grip down the smooth leather of the sleeve until he could snag Steve's broad, square hand, "But I'm getting a feel for Steve Rogers that tells me he might sometimes like to not have to be the one in command."

It was strange how Steve's hand didn't pull away from his, didn't flex, or grip, or flinch or stiffen at all, but somehow the comfortable intimacy of the contact was gone, leaving only something awkward and alarmed in its place. 

"Tony. I'm... That is, I don't-"

"Shh." Tony curled his fingers tighter, not letting anything slide away, and not for a moment asking himself why keeping this literal stranger beside him was suddenly so important. "It's fine. Doesn't have to be like that at all, if that isn't what you want." Tony cut a look upward, at the chiseled jaw and bright-flushed cheeks. "I'm just saying it could be, if you do want."

Steve closed his eyes, tipped his head back to the night as if to sip at higher, colder air, fill his lungs with it, and hold himself together, and yeah, Tony knew that drill. Breaking the iron bands from the inside sometimes felt like all you could do when that fist closed around your ribs and your mind started rabbitting in circles. He held on, rubbed his thumb over Steve's knuckles, just as Steve had earlier, grounding the man in the present and hoping he'd stick around for whatever was coming up next.

"I..." Steve blew out the breath like a plume of steam into the night. "I want to. I'm just not sure I _can_."

"Because of who you're hiding from?" Tony asked, and wasn't it interesting how the sightlines Steve immediately checked when reminded of the evasion weren't the lateral ones -- up the street or down, doorways or cars, but more aimed at the rooftops and balconies along the converted tenements that made up Jay street.

"I'm not hiding, exactly," Steve answered after a moment, voice softly thoughtful. "More like avoiding."

"Avoiding," Tony prompted, skeptical. "So someone doesn't know it's over?" And yeah, that was a test, because the very _last_ thing Tony needed in his life right now was a public squabble with a jealous ex lover, or a current lover who would ghost out of his life rather than ending things cleanly when the time came.

"No, it's not like that," Steve hurried to declare, blue eyes wide and earnest. "I'm not stepping out on anybody else, I promise. Haven't even been on a date since before I shipped out, either, so... it's just... well." He chewed his lip, brows furrowed in thought. "Have you ever started to feel like people think you're some kinda property? Not like you're a slave or anything, but maybe a car, or an heirloom chair; something more valuable than it is useful, you know?"

There was no hiding the expression that bitter memory brought to Tony's face then, so he didn't even try to do so. "Yeah. Yeah, I do know those feels."

"And then people start acting like you can be collected, or bequeathed, or..." Steve's jacket pulled up over his wrist as he gestured, and a Breitling watch peeked out of the sleeve. "Or even sold, and you get no damn say in it."

"Those ones too," Tony agreed. "So what; you running away from home and telling Dad to piss up a rope?"

Steve laughed at that. "Nothing so simple, I'm afraid. More like I'm AWOL and keeping a look out in case I need to take off and lead the MP's away from you."

"Well," Tony said, nudging the chair to corner up the walk that led to the Center's main entrance, and keeping hold of Steve's hand to tow him along up the ramp. "I guess we'd better get you upstairs before you cause a scene then, hadn't we?"

Steve chuckled, and let Tony withdraw his hand to get out his keys at the door. "Well, I'll admit I was curious about that," he said, then shrugged at the eyebrow Tony shot him. "You said you lived upstairs, but I didn't see an elevator when I was inside, just that open central staircase, and..." he fidgeted under the weight of Tony's stare. "And you obviously manage just fine, but I was just..."

Tony cracked up then, and pushed the door open. "Geez, your _face_ ," he giggled, giving Steve a shove through into the darkened front hall. "I'd apologize for yanking your chain, but that was just too adorable for words!"

"And yet you're still speaking," Steve grumbled from the shadows as Tony re-locked the door.

"Aw, don't be like that, saucepot," Tony said, dumping the keys into his pocket and wheeling himself over to the stairs; a rising bulwark of concrete and steel under linoleum, flanked along the inside by incongruously ornate wrought iron and walnut balustrades. "I still haven't shown you my chair's second-best trick." 

And with that, he keyed in the tap-code on his hidden touchpad, shifted his balance just so, and stood. The chair shifted and flowed around him until it held him erect -- tall and straight, and standing on his own two sturdily-braced feet. He took that first step up, thrilling as he always did at how smoothly his machine moved with him, the balance perfect, the servos whisper-quiet, the range of motion elegant and poised as he swung around on the wide step and found himself face to face with Steve Rogers' open mouthed, unabashed awe.

"Wow," he whispered, eyes huge and shining in the gloom, arms slipping from their annoyed brace across his chest as he stepped up to the stair as if helplessly drawn by gravity. "That's..." his hand drifted out as if he wanted to touch the candy-apple red exoskeleton, but didn't quite dare. "So you can just... climb the stairs."

"I can just climb the stairs," Tony agreed, "If I wanted to, I could use the chair to walk, run, or even fight, in a pinch, but really," he reached out two fingers to hook Steve's chin, and urge him to lean in close. "Right now, think this is the best perk to the standing formation..." 

And then Tony kissed him, and Steve let himself be kissed; leaning into Tony, face tilted upward in a drowsy smile, as if being kissed at such an angle were a comfort to him somehow. It was unlike any other kiss with any other hookup Tony could remember in his life -- warm and slow, unhurried and tender as if they'd been lovers for years, and easy kisses and reverently wandering touches were a daily thing between them. As if easy kisses had been any part of Tony's life at all in the three years it had been since Afghanistan spit the chewed remains of the Estranged Stark Heir out, and Jarvis brought Anthony Carbonell home in his place. As if there had been anyone in all that time, whom Tony had wanted to bring close enough to him that he _could_ be kissed.

_God, has it really been that long?_ Tony thought, licking open the soft seam of Steve's lips as he slid both hands into the warm welter of Steve's jacket to feel the eager breadth of muscle beneath it.

Steve made a quizzical sound in his throat, even as he tilted to accommodate Tony's deeper kiss. His eyes peeked open, and Tony saw a glint of concern in the glitter of blue. "Your hands are shaking," Steve whispered, lips brushing damply against Tony's own once Tony let him speak. And yes, they were, even cupped warm and wide against the curve of Steve's belly, Tony could feel that hair-trigger quiver in the bones of every finger.

"It's... " he stole another kiss, and looked for the words. "It's been awhile. For me."

"Since...?" Tony felt Steve brush a tentative hand up along the side-brace of his exosuit, and he nodded, grateful now for his earlier, annoyed confession. It meant he didn't need those words now.

"We can wait," Steve began, with soft eyes and wry lips. "I know you said you don't do hook ups until you-" He cut himself off with a grunt when Tony yanked him forward, one knee pressing between Steve's own, so that the denim-trapped bulge of his erection rubbed hard against Tony's thigh.

"Yeah, no," Tony said into his ear as they both clung, panting a little at the sensation. "I've waited long enough. You?"

Steve made a noise that was something like a growl, and something like a moan, and his fingers slipped around the metal framework to clasp at Tony's hips like he was drowning. Then he nodded his head against the curve of Tony's shoulder, and murmured, "Way, way too long."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #WhoopsMyHandSlipped #SorryNotSorry #CommentsAreLove


	9. Alibi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the past is lamented, and crimes are not brought to light.

*** Jarvis ***

_Maria Carbonell Stark_ , the stone read, _Devoted wife and mother. 1933 - 1991 Where ignorance is bliss..._ And there the quotation faltered, nonsensical unless one turned to regard the neighboring stone.

_Howard Stark, 1920 - 2010 ...T’is folly to be wise._

No false claims as to devotions of husband or fatherhood there, Jarvis was grimly satisfied to note, just a finely detailed list of Mr. Stark’s many and varied contributions to mankind’s technological ability to destroy itself, engraved on the sides and back of the imposing stone edifice. No mention anywhere in the list of the son Stark had left behind. Twice.

“Your priorities remained unchanged to the very end, I see,” Jarvis said to the tombstone, and was immediately surprised to find the sentiment accompanied not with bitterness, but with an odd pang of nostalgia. There had been good times, working for Howard, of course -- mainly those years when his Ana had been alive, and Agent Carter still a vibrant force in the shallow tapestry of life with a genuis playboy insustrialist, but he had loved his position in Howard’s household once.

And then, of course, he had come to love young Tony better. The son he’d so dearly wished he and Ana could have had, a brilliant child, merry at bizarre times, somber at others, sensitive and courageous, and so very much _more_ than just a genuis who’d be good at making things explode. He hadn’t realized quite how much he’d come to love the boy until he was suddenly gone -- banished to the wilds of Boston and MIT, and no longer a balance in the household against Maria’s subdued depressions and Howard’s increasingly abrasive ambitions. And then, finally... well.

“He wasn’t safer without you,” he told the tombstone then, expecting and receiving no warmer reaction from it, than he’d had from the man beneath it any time he had protested the distance Howard created between his son and the rest of his life. “Nor you, without him. You Stark men, each imagining yourselves Atlas to carry the world alone. You ought to have told him everything, and let him _help you_ uncover Hydra once Madame was gone. He might have been your staunchest ally...” He sighed then, suddenly chilled with a familiar old futility, and said, “You’re beyond regretting that now, though.”

Then he turned back to Maria’s tombstone, and leaned carefully to brush a few fallen leaves from the top. “How they did miss you, madam,” he told her, as he always did when he found himself holding this audience with the dead. “I’m sure it would shock you to see how well you held those two together.” Because, of course, in her absence, the two Stark men flew instantly, violently, and irrevocably apart.

A night wind rustled the cypress trees overhead, traffic distant and muffled under the sound. Jarvis realized all at once that he could hear shoes crunching on the gravel path, but after an anxious moment, relaxed. Only one, and no play of a watchman’s torch across the grassy patch where he stood. It would be James, then. On time, as usual.

“You know this was the last place I actually saw Tony face to face, right?” James asked as he left the path and crossed to meet Jarvis at Maria’s stone, as polished and precise in his civilian clothes as in any officer’s uniform, but this had pretty much always been the case with James Rhodes. Jarvis had briefly, futilely wished that the trait would wear off on Tony, but of course it never had. “Right over there, under that hydrangea.” He pointed to a tall bush beside an empty fountain, and Jarvis returned a nod.

“I remember. You were shouting at each other.” Jarvis sighed and shook his head. “Of course at that time Sir was shouting at just about everyone, and all the time. He took his mother’s death rather hard, I’m afraid.”

“Not as hard as his father’s survival.” A hint of bitterness in the not-quite-neutral words, but of course there would be; that was the bleeding heart of the matter, the bone they could not pick between them for biting at the other. James the son of a single mother, with a void where he had always wished a father might be, and Tony with a living, present father whom he despised, and blamed for his mother’s death. Both of them too young, too bright, too easily wounded to step away from the pointless fight before their bridge was in flames, both of them too prideful to try and reach across the gulf after it had fallen to ash.

“I have, over the years, come to suspect that Howard Stark rather preferred it that way,” Jarvis offered to the tall, dark silhouette beside him. “He did certainly stir up the hornet’s nest at SHIELD as soon as young Sir had taken himself off on his own, and I have been told that things got rather heated when he did.”

“The Hydra rumors,” James agreed, darkly. “We got whispers of all that overseas, but conspiracy theories from home are just downtime entertainment when you’ve got a war to fight.” Then he tugged the pockets of his jacket down, a restless, frustrated move that sounded bigger than it was in the gloom. “Until they aren’t.”

“Until they aren’t,” Jarvis agreed, and both were silent for a long moment. 

“Your message said you had news,” Jarvis mustered himself to ask eventually, and looking grateful for the interruption to his thoughts, James nodded.

“Yeah. Stane’s armored SUV was recovered from an insurgent encampment by a troop of Marines last month,” he said, watching Jarvis so closely he could not have missed his involuntary flinch at the news. “In Panjshir.”

Jarvis blinked. “I’m sorry, where is...?”

“Northern part of the country. Nowhere near Tora Bora.”

“And so the body?”

“Still unaccounted for, we’re okay.” James’ voice was all comfort, and Jarvis did not scruple to take it. “Army CID tested the vehicle for blood spatter once they brought it back to Kabul, which as you know, they found plenty.”

“Yes, of course,” Jarvis murmured, making an effort not to remember the smell, the heat, and the icy draught of panic setting in as he realized that he had a two hundred pound mess on his hands, and no idea how to tidy it up. In a life such as his, it was difficult to assign which moment was luckiest over another, but the moment when Lt. Colonel James Rhodes chose to take his call, and talk him out of turning himself in to the authorities on the spot sat very high in the rankings. Jarvis did not for one minute regret having killed Stane. He was then, and remained to this day, ready to face prison for his act of revenge against that duplicitous parasite of a man, but that did not mean Jarvis was in any way _eager_ for it. Jails were untidy places, he suspected, and they tended to stain one’s things.

“I assume they tested it for DNA as well?”

“Oh yeah,” James nodded. “First thing after they ran the VIN number. Positive match, of course. Coroner said he was confident Stane couldn’t have survived blood loss of that volume in such a hostile environment. They’re declaring him dead, and given where they found his car, and the dirty connections that are starting to surface around his tracks, CID is closing the investigation into his death as well.”

“Oh thank God!” The words escaped him in a rush, and he found himself rather glad that Maria’s stone was so high, as it afforded him a convenient prop when his knees went a little weak.

“Right there with ya, man,” James replied, shifting to lean on the stone’s other side. “That is _not_ something I ever want to do again. Bodycount from a stand up fight is one thing, but this shell game bullshit is bad for my blood pressure!”

“Absolutely. Let us have a gentleman’s agreement then,” Jarvis declared, and offered his hand.

James shook it without a moment’s hesitation. “So Stane’s kid kicked up a little bit of fuss at the news, but given that he won’t inherit if his dad’s just missing, that didn’t last. At this point, far as the USAF is concerned, Obidiah Stane was either killed for the money Stark gave him to ransom Tony, or he was backdoor peddling Stark weaponry to enemies of the state, and was killed when a deal went bad.” Which in a strictly literal sense, were both true. Jarvis did rather appreciate that irony.

“Thank you, James,” he said, and the other shook his head.

“Don’t thank me yet. There’ll still be questions and rumors. Stane’s kid will probably keep digging, and,” here he cut a canny, searching glance Jarvis’ way, “Army CID might not have made a big deal of the staggeringly high amount of morphine in Stane’s blood samples, but a Stateside judge might feel differently.”

And here, Jarvis had to smile. “James, you mustn’t look so shocked,” he said, patting the man’s elbow. “I’m an 89 year old man. Spry as I may be, what chance would I have had at getting the better of a brute like Obidiah Stane without some manner of chemical interference?”

“One of the lab techs said it looked like a fatal dose,” he challenged, and Jarvis shrugged.

“Oh, well perhaps it was. I’ll confess the bullet made me feel far more certain about the whole matter. Erm, speaking of which...?”

James shook his head, chuckling. “No body, no slug, no casing, no ballistics. The gun you asked for was a captured item, and by now it’s disappeared into one of a hundred arsenals.” He spread his hands wide, palms toward the ground in front of him. “Case closed. But I hope you won’t take it personally if I don’t let you make me tea for a little while.”

“Well, Lieutennant Colonel Rhodes,” Jarvis said, pushing off the stone, “see that you do not accidentally or with deliberate intent sell my charge into indentured servitude with enemies of the free world, and I shall have no cause to wish you ill at all.”

He turned to take his leave, but a gentle hand on Jarvis’ elbow stopped him. When he turned back, James’ face had gone sober, a hint of worry in his eyes. “Will you,” he began, then licked his lips and tried again. “I miss him. Tony was a real little shit in college, but he was still my best friend, and I miss him. We were hothead, idiot kids with big mouths and chips on our shoulders back then, and it kills me that I let so many years go by without trying to track him down and make it right. And then one day there you are, kicking that door back open again, bringing Tony back into my world because if I don’t help you get into a war zone, that little shit stirring brat’s gonna get killed.” 

James shook his head, wiping surreptitiously at his eyes. “I thought him kicking his Daddy’s weapon’s business to the curb would keep him out of the fight, but it almost cost him everything, because he might have been right to push his dad and Stane away. And now... Now I can’t help thinking how _stupid_ we were then. I’d like to see him again. I know,” he held up a hand, fending off Jarvis’ reply. “I know he must’ve suffered like hell in captivity -- I’ve seen guys come home from that shit, and I know it’s hell and then some, and maybe he won’t wanna see anybody that reminds him of that, but... Will you tell him anyway? Just tell him that I miss my friend, and I want to see him again?”

And to that, Jarvis could only smile, and give the man’s shoulder a steadying pat. “I will tell him, James. I cannot guess at what he will say, but I think perhaps it would be good for Tony to have a friend such as you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand the plot thickens! In case it wasn't clear before, the Jarvis who answered the phone was indeed the Edwin Jarvis from Agent Carter. I realize I have played fast and loose with lifespans here, but I'm handwaving that as having something mumblemumble to do with exposure to the Tesseract, okay? And anyway, my own grandfather broke his wrist at 92 by falling off a roof, so healthy activity into old age is totally a thing!
> 
> ANYway! To all those taking the time out of their weekend to read and comment -- THANK YOU! You're what keeps me at the keyboard!


	10. Velvet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is revealed the value of art, the cruelty of parents, and the importance of muscle memory.

*** Steve ***

_What the hell d'you think you're doing?_ The voice in Steve's head as he followed Tony's wheelchair/body-brace/ walking-machine up the stairs sounded a heck of a lot like Bucky -- Bucky of the daring grins and flashing eyes, of the comforting hands and exasperated groans, not James of the silences and grinding, leaden stares. It was the Bucky of old, who always tried, (though never very hard,) to talk Steve down when his willful sense of fairness would swell up bigger than the both of them; the Bucky who wondered aloud why he always took Steve's side, and yet never once moved to leave him hanging, cornered and alone when it counted. The Bucky who remembered knowing Steve at all.

And maybe that was why Steve -- the Steve who never quite stopped being tiny, hungry, and furious, found the lip to answer back to that silent, panicked voice, _Making time with someone I like. And he likes me back, so there's no harm in it._

_You don't know this fella! You don't know nothin' about him at all, and he sure as hell don't know you!_

Steve flexed his hand on the banister, felt the slightly grubby smirch of a hundred years' trailing hands stick and skid beneath his own. He focused on the flex and thrust of Tony's ass and legs, and the smooth way the machine around him worked with his movement, as if he was wearing it like clothing, rather than it carrying him. It was brilliant. Tony was brilliant -- half an hour's conversation with the man was enough to work that out. And the way he looked at Steve, as if _he_ was the interesting one, and Captain America no more than an amusing resemblance... that had woken the hungry, lonely thing inside him that Steve had never been any good at talking sense to. Made it snarl and claw and rattle its cage to get at what it wanted -- what it had wanted for as long as Steve could remember.

Things were different now though. Laws were different. There was no reason he had to do without and make do with wishing now.

_Laws don't change thinkin', Punk! You've seen the news, the protests. Howard and Peggy didn't fight a war with SHIELD and HYDRA for this! They didn't bring Captain America out of the ice just so you could shame them this way when they need you._

Steve clenched his eyes shut and hesitated, heart pounding as his stomach twisted with futile, feeble guilt. Above him, Tony had stepped off the landing and turned down the hallway with quiet thuds of his walker's legs. Keys were jingling Tony's hands, and Steve's erection pulsed against the crease of his jeans like a trapped and angry thing, and there was simply no way he was backing down and running for cover now.

No way in the world. 

"They need a dancing monkey, they'll get a dancing monkey." Steve shaped the defiant snarl in his head into hollow whispers, air barely a tickle over his lips. "Don't much matter who the monkey dances with on his own dime." 

"What's that?" Tony asked, voice low and furtive as he pushed back the door and let light spill out of the apartment behind it.

Steve conjured up a smile and turned it toward him as he hurried up the last few steps to Tony’s side. "Just turning my phone off," he said, though it hadn't been on since the moment he'd hung up with Tony at the subway entrance. "Don't want to be interrupted."

"Or to have your location triangulated via that cell service tower over there," Tony agreed, smug and sly as he stole a kiss.

"Pretty sure it doesn't work like that," Steve chuckled, figuring basic telemetry couldn't have changed all that much since he and Morita had used radio signals to locate Hydra bases in the Austrian hills. The kiss, however, he allowed; damp and spicy and bristly with beard, and just like that, the fight in his head dwindled to distant, meaningless static. This _was_ what Steve wanted, and by damn he was going to have it.

"What?" Tony gasped, backing into the apartment and towing Steve after by his hand, "Television has lied to me? Call my lawyer! Whom do I sue!"

Steve chuckled, and let himself be led across the apartment. It was clearly the man's haven; untidy and enthusiastic in a way that was at once chaotic, and deliberate, as though Tony might be able to find any book, any paper, any tiny fiddly screw he wanted in the uncertain landscape within minutes, so long as nobody ever snuck in here and cleaned anything up. The furniture was of the slouching, sturdily comfortable sort; too well loved to be cheap, but too well worn to be valuable, no one item matching any other, but all of them broken in the way that none of the furnishings in Howard Stark's mansion seemed to be. Though technically it was Steve's mansion now, signed, sealed and notarized by a lawyer who seemed to find the whole thing just as baffling as Steve himself did... but honestly, it was a relief to find himself in a place where the furniture looked like you were _supposed_ to use it! 

There was exactly one level surface in the whole place not buried in papers, books, and arcane, unknowable robot-clutter, and that was the seat of the recliner. If Steve was going to be generous, about half of the small table beside it was clear too, give or take a beer bottle. And in pride of place over the recliner... 

Steve ground to a halt, not quite able to believe what he was seeing. "You should start with suing whoever sold you that painting," he said, pointing past what looked like a very tall swing-arm lamp with a sort of claw where the light should be. "It's terrible."

Tony turned back to him, still grinning. "Hey now, don't harsh," he chided. "I'll have you know I paid good money for that in Vegas! Like... twenty bucks, at least." Steve snickered, as he was pretty sure he'd been meant to do, and deflected the poke Tony aimed at his ribs. "Besides -- Captain America on Blue Velvet has been good luck for me since College."

It really was dreadful. The texture of the cloth made the painted costume look like some hairy kind of carpeting, and the velvet's brilliant hue made the pale skin tones look like the man was half dead. Steve could only imagine the outrage the designer of his original USO poster would have felt at seeing his work reproduced this way.

"College, huh?" Steve deflected another poke at his ribs, but didn't move out of range. "See now I'm picturing that hanging over your bed, watching you make time with- Oof!" Tony's fingers were pointier than expected, and Steve hadn't realized he'd be ticklish there.

"Jesus, no, I was like fifteen, you perv!" Tony laughed, poking Steve again for good measure, but softer this time. "Not for lack of _me_ being a horny little shit at the time, of course, but everybody else at MIT was at least three years older than me, and Rhodey..." for just a second, that weightless smile flickered out, but Tony caught the slip before it fell too far, and carried the joke home valiantly. "My roommate would have killed anybody who took me up on it. He was ROTC, too, so he'd have known a dozen foolproof ways to get rid of the body."

Steve heard the past tense in that sentence, heard the weight of loss behind it, and he wondered just for a second, how far the gulf between Tony and his friend had grown. There were so, so many ways to lose a friend, after all, and Steve knew some of them were more absolute than others. It didn't take death, or even a world of distance to feel loss like a rotten tooth when the voice that meant home to you spoke in a stranger's tones, suspicious and terse when chance crossed your paths in the house you shared with him and his friends, in the future you never asked to see...

Steve made himself laugh, shaking the intrusive self pity out of his head. This wasn't about Bucky. It wasn't about Tony's friend either, and it wouldn't do either one of them any good to make their stolen evening swing that way. He refocused his attention on Tony, and found the same kind of wry regret haunting that rakish face as he felt in his own.

"Well. You're of age now though, right?" Steve tried for ‘gently ribbing’ in his tone, but from the softness that question brought to Tony's warm eyes, he guessed he'd fallen somewhere short of it.

"Old enough to know better now," Tony agreed, reaching up to trace callused, competent fingers through Steve's hair, from temple to nape. "Young enough to do it anyway." He tipped a nod at the sofa, which looked like it had probably come from Tony's college years too, and his smile went a little dirty again. "So, you wanna make out right here, or...?"

Steve summoned a theatrical shiver, and darted a glance at the horrible painting again. "Only if you turn that creepy old man to face the wall. I don't think I can get it up with him staring at me..."

At which Tony clucked his tongue regretfully and said, "Performance issues. Y'know, one in five men..." Then he was laughing through the silencing kiss, and staggering along as Steve forcibly marched him away from the sofa and into the open door of the bedroom. The walking chair manouvered elegantly, even backward, and if not for the solid framework around Tony's hips, and the soft whine of servos activating with each step, Steve might almost have forgotten it was there. Almost. It did offer really fantastic hand grip options, after all.

The light came on automatically as they entered, revealing a bedroom exactly suited to the living space outside it -- bed unmade, laundry flung against one wall, books and papers piled everywhere that would hold them, and a series of paths just wide enough to roll the chair throughout it all. Further detail he didn't bother with, because the feeling of Tony's mouth moving under his, the scratch of his trim little beard against Steve's chin, the firm swell of hip flexing against his knuckles was far more relevant than any analysis of Tony's housekeeping skills.

When the walker nudged up against the bed, Steve halted, dropped to his knees and thumbed open the button of Tony's flies. The walker offered just enough room between the bracing around Tony's ribs and the hinged struts over the hips for Steve to yank Tony's pants and underwear down around his thighs. Not far, but just enough to let Tony's hard cock spring free and slap up against his bare stomach, and this... oh yes, this, Steve could do.

He leaned in close, hands curled between the cool enameled steel and the warm, slightly damp skin of Tony's hips, and savored the velvety slide of that cock along his cheek as he pressed his nose to the crease of Tony's hip and just breathed the man in. He felt the prickle of coarse, trimmed hair against his cheek, the slight burn of salt against his lips as he breathed the other man's scent deep, deep into his lungs. The tension melted from his jaw, his neck, his shoulders as the musky, hungry smell of Tony's arousal rolled over Steve's tongue -- he could feel it bleed from his mouth on the gust of his groaning sigh as he pressed an open mouthed kiss to that smooth olive skin.

"S... Steve..." Fingers threaded into his hair, trembling just a bit as he turned his face, turned his kiss to that heated thrust of cock and knelt back in a long, wet slide to reach the head. This, he knew. This wouldn't be different, new, or strange -- neon lit, chromed, and computerized. This would be just like it always had been; the taste of salty skin, the growing hint of come spreading across his tongue, bitter or funky or sour or sweet or all of them together. The heavy slide, solid and thick and knocking against his gag reflex until he made himself relax, open into an almost-yawn and-

"Jesus, Steve!" Tony gripped his hair tight now, tugging, warning, so Steve shifted for a better angle, fixed his grip on Tony's hips and shoved in close, tongue pressed up to strafe the underside, throat open to accept the weighty thrust as he pressed his nose to Tony's belly and- "Steve, stop!"

He froze, skin suddenly taut with horror like a dousing of icy water, Tony pulled his hips back, fingers still clenched to hold Steve's head still until his cock slipped free, and he dropped to the bed with a gusting sigh and a screech of bedsprings.

"I'm sorry," Steve managed, hands hovering, the words like gravel in his throat. "Tony, I'm sorry, I thought you... God, I'm so-"

"Hey, no," Tony answered, his hold on Steve's hair gentling to a broad palm, a spread of fingers that steered him in close enough to kiss -- one whelming press of lip to lip, tongue to tongue, and then a rain of sweet, quick pecks across Steve's cheeks, his brow, his eyelids. "No, you're good, you're so much better than good. You're amazing at that, and I want more, I promise." 

"Then..." Steve licked his lips, swallowed against the sudden desert in his throat, settled his palms to his thighs, and tried again. "Then why-"

Tony's thumbs rubbed at Steve's temples, his fingers flexing and curling against his scalp in a pattern that was at once soothing, and confusingly arousing. "It's just I." Tony shook his head, huffed a laugh. "With you... all your..." he freed one hand to take in Steve, knee to crown in one fluttering gesture. "Look, I know we've both got our secrets here, and it's not like either one of us is expecting a ring out of this deal, but I need... um." he laughed again, rueful as he leaned close to press their foreheads together and murmur, "I'd like to know your name first."

Steve blinked. He hadn't thought he could be _more_ thrown than when Tony had pushed him away, but... "I. I already told you," he began.

Tony cut him off, ducking low to kiss his nose fondly. "No, sweetheart, your real name. I just..." He laughed again, and sat back at last, freeing his hands to begin undoing the straps that held the bulky walking chair to him. "I can't sit here calling you Steve Rogers in my head while you're sucking my cock," he said, stealing a wry glance. "I just... it feels too much like I'm thirteen years old, and terrified my Dad's gonna come in and find me masturbating over his comic collection again, and... I just..."

Now it was Steve's turn to laugh. "Now who's got performance issues?" he goaded, digging out his wallet and flipping it open. "Steve Rogers is my real name," he said, and watching Tony's mouth drop a little bit open as he peered at the misleading details, he had to add, "I hope this isn't a deal killer."

Tony shook his head, but didn't stop staring at the driver's license for which Steve had neither tested, nor paid, as if he could spot the forgery. "No, honey, no. I just can't decide whether your parents were the biggest nerds ever, or completely sadistic, naming a kid who looked like you after Captain America." At last he tore his gaze away, and reached out to push Steve's wallet down so he could get a hand into Steve's hair again. "It must've been hell for you in gym class," he purred, scratching as if Steve was a giant cat, and he meant to get a purr out of him.

It was a surprisingly effective tactic, Steve had to admit. "Well, in my ma's defense, " he said, reaching out to work open the chair's fastenings down Tony's legs, "She always told me I was named after my grandfather."

"Well that makes sense," Tony agreed, leaning a little so Steve could undo the last clasp, highest up on his leg. "There must've been hundreds of little Steve Rogers in those first few baby boom years. Hey, sit back for a minute, ok?" he asked, then as Steve complied, leaned over and braced both hands heavily on Steve's shoulders as he pushed up out of the metal frame's embrace. 

"You mind getting my pants and shoes?" he asked, as if it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world to ask for such a basic help. Steve couldn't help but think with chagrin back to his own fragile youth, and his graceless, prideful stubbornness in the face of any hint of help or charity.

"Sure, Tony," he said, making careful, but short work of the clothing so that Tony could step delicately out of the sprawling framework of metal, leather, and canvas. His weight stayed solidly braced on Steve's shoulders though -- a heady kind of trust, and in its way, strangely more intimate than the feeling of Tony's cock pressing down his tongue had been. 

Tony moved slowly, careful as a cat picking its way across a cluttered table, but there was something in the act that seemed like permission, even an instruction to look his fill, and get it over with. So that’s what Steve did. 

The most obvious damage was the left knee, back-thrust, a little sideways under Tony’s weight, and knotted thickly above and below with scars. It was all too easy to imagine bone shards punched through that pale skin, and months of bad healing to set that awkward angle up to last a lifetime afterward. Steve wanted, for a shaky moment, to kiss that poor, abused knee, but that far this indulgence surely could not stretch. Instead, he lifted his hands to settle gently on Tony's ribs, and looked to the other leg. 

There was a more delicate tracery of scarring that ran a spiral pattern up from the right ankle around the shin, and several deep, ropy pockmarks -- looking more like burns to Steve's battlefield eye, than any crushing damage -- across the span of his right thigh. The highest was just over the bone of his hip, half hidden in the drape of his shirt tails. It was this leg Tony had to work the hardest to lift free of its metal cradle. Both feet were perfect; pale and oddly delicate as the bones spread to take what weight he could put on them, but the right seemed more tentative to Steve, as though he wasn't sure until the ankle weighed in that he'd reached the floor with it. Nerve damage then.

“Does.” Steve swallowed, then tried again. “Does it hurt?”

Tony’s smile was a warmly indulgent thing as he eased himself down onto the bed again. “When it’s gonna rain, yeah,” he said, leaning to reach a sort of keypad tucked inside a hidden curve of the walker’s frame. His fingers set up a quick and furtive rhythm, and the chair began to move again, folding, sliding, shifting and rearranging itself down into the bulky, two wheeled shape Steve had first seen. Then it backed up, pivoted neatly, and rolled itself along to what looked like a kind of charging station by the bathroom.

“Other than that,” Tony went on as he began to work down the buttons of his shirt, “It only bothers me when I do parkour.” Steve opened his mouth to ask what the heck parkour was, but Tony pressed a gentle finger over them first. “So to answer the question you probably meant to be asking, yes, you may touch my legs. It won’t hurt me. In fact...” he lay back suddenly, used his elbows to hitch himself fully onto the bed, and then turned to regard Steve like a brazen, beautiful Odalisque. “I strongly endorse the idea of you touching my legs, as well as whatever other parts of me as might strike your fancy.”

Steve drew in a trembling breath, hung on the choices spread out before him. The rosy thrust of Tony’s cock, still gleaming from his kiss beckoned, but so did the tautly muscled abdomen, dusted with dark hair like that on his slender legs, and the spread of his chest and muscled shoulders gave testament to just how rarely Tony used the powered functions of his chair. In the end, it was his hands that Steve reached for first, nimble and scarred, with fingernails chewed low, and tiny burns sprinkled across the knuckles like stars.

He traced them reverently between his own for a moment before he raised one hand to his face so he could kiss the palm. Tony made a hungry noise, rolled toward him, and that was all the encouragement Steve needed to deepen the exploration. Tony gasped when he tongued at the eye of his palm, groaned when he nibbled gently at the heel on his way to suckle the sweet, thin skin over his wrist. The other hand threaded back into Steve’s hair, anchoring him to his task in a way he couldn’t help but find soothing.

“God, look at how perfect you are,” Tony’s breath ruffled the fine hairs at Steve’s ear, his lips close enough to brush along the curl of flesh there, and send shivering fire coursing down Steve’s skin. “Will you let me see you, Steve? Will you take those clothes off and let me see all of you?”

He couldn’t help the groan that rattled out of him then, couldn’t even feel embarrasment at how ragged and needy it sounded. Steve pulled free the two fingers he’d had in his mouth, and gulped a breath of air before he could manage to nod. This was always going to happen, needing to show Erskine’s work, hear the praise and admiration, and pretend to accept it for himself -- anyone he ever went with now saw the same thing, and nothing Steve could do would make it different.

Best to get it over with. 

He gulped a breath and thrust roughly to his feet beside the bed. His cock, too long strangled between his bunched thigh and deeply creased denim, gave a blood-hungry surge of pain as he did so. That wrung another grunt from him, but the ache was bracing too, and in its shadow Steve made short and efficient work of his task. Simpler than one of those suits; tee shirt over his head, folded in two quick swipes; boots toed off in a quick tumble, socks whipped free and tucked into each boot as he righted them; jeans yielding almost as soon as he popped the button open and began to tug.

“Hey.” 

Steve stopped, one leg hovering as he followed that soft word to Tony’s face. His generous mouth quirked down a bit, those wide blue eyes fixed on Steve’s face with what could be concern, but could also be doubt. He swallowed. “What?”

Then Tony smiled -- not the rakish grin, nor the mischievous smirk, but rather a soft, comforting thing almost like gratitude. “Nothing,” he answered, and his gaze didn’t flicker away from Steve’s face. “I just wanted to see you.”

Steve swallowed, and held that stare while he shifted his weight and pulled the other leg of his jeans off. He hadn’t bought underwear when he’d stopped at the little vintage store for these clothes, and he’d known better than to assume anything at all that White Star had given him was free of trackers, so now his cock stood high and proud against his belly, defiant to the sense of nervy, defiant exposure Steve was weathering in every other inch of his skin. But then again, the damned thing always had had a mind of its own, and no damned sense of decorum.

Tony’s stare never wavered from Steve’s face though, and the look in his eyes now that Steve stood, bared and blushing before him, was one of rapt appreciation. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, without a single glance at Steve’s body. 

_I see you_ , was what those words sounded like to Steve though, _I understand you_. And something fragile and barely mended inside him collapsed under the thawing weight of that promise, thin as it was. He dragged in a breath, shivering and wet over his tongue, and then he managed a smile. “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” he said.

Tony grinned at that, and lifted one hand in invitation. “That’s all I’m after here,” he said as Steve let himself be reeled in and settled, warm and close, and _wanted_ in this man’s bed. He closed his eyes and sighed in relief as Tony brushed gentle kisses over the lids and murmured, “that’s all I need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, do I get to keep the explicit tag yet?   
> As always, thanks for the comments! I know you don't have to, but I'm glad for those of you who take the time!


	11. Steel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which habits are broken, challenges are set, and expectations exceeded.

***Tony***

There’d been a time in Tony's life when he had liked to tell people that he only really got two things from his father; genius, and vanity. It had been a shittily egotistical thing for the only child of a millionaire to say of course, especially when talking to people whose upbringing had definitely never involved a butler, cocktail parties with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or magazine interviews at the age of seven, but Tony had said it, owned it, and believed it true at the time.

He didn’t say that kind of thing anymore. Not because he wasn’t a genius, of course, and definitely not because he wasn’t vain. It was more like Life had gone out of its way to instruct Tony as to the depth of his privilege, and what kind of genius could he claim to be if he refused to learn a lesson like that one?

In the army hospital in Kabul, the doctors had told Tony that they could do some reconstructive work on his legs -- re-break some of the awkwardly healed spots, install screws and pins to reinforce others -- and that they might possibly, with a year or so of physical therapy, get his legs stabilized enough to let him walk with crutches most of the time. Maybe. The State Department had agreed to the treatment -- sort of a ‘sorry about all that torture, let’s make nice now and who needs lawyers’ package deal, but Tony had only wanted to know one thing at the time. 

'When can I go home?'

A year if he let them do the work right there, with no guarantees of success. A week if he signed the offer away, and let Jarvis sneak him back into the US quietly and quasi-legally. Jarvis knew a guy who knew a guy, and he had a new passport and ID for Tony, and Tony had decided he wasn't interested in asking any more questions just then. He was going home, no matter what name he had to do it under.

They had spent that first night back in a New York hotel. Anonymous and cramped, he would have called it once, but after six months of Afghanistan, he couldn't call it anything but luxury. After Jarvis had gone to his own room to sleep off the jet lag, Tony had hauled himself out of bed, stripped his clothes off, and crawled to the full length mirror that made up the closet door. There he’d looked at himself, thin and sallow in the unforgiving light, for a long time, and he’d told himself, over and over, that this was it. This was how it was going to be now.

Tony had never been tall, but now he’d be looking up to everyone, yes, even Justin fucking Hammer. He’d never taken dancing very seriously, but now even hump-grinding on a crowded dance floor was off the menu. He’d scorned athletics as a waste of his time for years, but now athletics would scorn him. He’d never walk somebody down the aisle now, even for a joke. He’d never get to follow through on that threat he’d once made, to dance on his old man’s grave...

Tony had cracked open the minibar then, and sat there all night, drinking with his naked reflection until the both of them blurred into an angry, miserable sleep. The next morning, Jarvis had come into Tony’s room to find him still there, propped up naked against the wall, and snoring over a constellation of tiny liquor bottles that owed him no favors.

That had been the last time Tony had let anybody see him naked. 

Until tonight.

Tonight, for reasons that surely made sense to the misfiring neurons somewhere in his lizard brain, Tony was letting the most perfect specimen of manhood he had ever laid eyes on take off his pants. No, not letting -- Tony was asking him to do it. Asking this beautiful, funny, sweetly snarky man to reveal all his damage to the light, to look his fill, to _touch_ the wounds that had broken him... There was a very good chance that Tony had lost his goddamned mind, along with every single protective instinct he’d ever had. But he did it anyway, and Steve's gentle reverence as he complied took his breath away as a reward for the simple trust.

But then when he’d asked to see Steve, instead of pride or lust, Tony watched those blue eyes fill with chagrin, worry, and a baffling sort of regret. Then Steve had stripped, as quickly and efficiently as a soldier with two minutes to get through his shower; nothing enticing about it, nothing drawn out or coy, nothing done for show. He looked perfect, gorgeous, and fully as miserable about it as Tony had felt, and all of a sudden Tony had found that he _needed_ to fix that. 

Here was a kid just as lost, just as lonely as him, a kid who felt that hiding in public was better than being safe at home, wherever home was, and it wasn’t right that they should reveal each other like this and still feel so helplessly alone. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t what Tony wanted this to be.

“Hey,” he snared Steve’s attention just as he yanked his jeans down, and for a moment, when Steve’s cock sprang free, Tony completely lost the plot, because Holy Chrome, but it had been a long time since he'd literally had his mouth water for a nice prick. 

But then the wary look in Steve’s eyes snared his attention away again, drew Tony in as he hesitated, one leg almost out of his jeans to ask, “What?” And there was a line between his brows, petulant, stubborn, defensive.

Tony couldn’t help smiling. “Nothing,” he promised, watching those expressive eyes speak their silent truths. “I just wanted to see you.” Oh mercy, there went that pretty blush again, rosy and perfect as it brightened those chiseled cheekbones like the dawn. Tony wanted badly to see just how far down that shy pink spread, but he found that even more, he wanted to keep Steve’s gaze on his, to hold it steady and watch the shadows clear from those bright eyes, leaving only trusting heat behind. Until Steve could look back at him and know Tony meant every word when he breathed, “You’re so beautiful.”

The blush heightened, Steve's eyes fluttered briefly closed as he shivered and sucked in a breath past damp, soft lips. “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” he said

“That’s all I’m after here," Tony promised, lifting a hand in invitation, leading this trusting stranger to lay himself out, naked and hard in Tony's unmade bed. It was nothing short of a quiet miracle when Steve did just that, settling in warm and strong alongside him, asking nothing, offering everything. Tony couldn't help smiling as he leaned low to kiss those blue eyes closed, murmuring, "That’s all I need.”

It had been a year and a half since Tony had gotten laid, that much was true, but it had been far longer than that since he'd been with a sub or a lover as eager and responsive to his every touch as Steve was. He drank in Tony's touches hungrily, gasped and arched and left no doubt whenever Tony's hands, teeth, or tongue found a new sensitive spot, or when he just lingered at a known one, and worried at it till it glowed with heat.

Steve let Tony play him like a grand piano, eagerly rising to every stroke and bite till he gleamed with sweat and knotted his fists in the rumpled blankets, till Tony had rendered him glassy eyed and gasping. And oh, but Tony wanted to test his range; wanted to see if that lithe back would arch as high for a rake of nails down his belly as for a stroke of tongue; wanted to see what the pitch of that sigh would sound like if he were to slap Steve's cock instead of just licking it; wanted to find out if this lovely boy would yield and yield and keep on yielding until, say, all of Tony's fist had slipped inside him.

It was a heady rush of lust Tony weathered then, propped over Steve's thigh, tugging long, moist strokes along that beautiful cock when he wanted, so badly wanted to set his teeth to the curve of Steve's hip and bite down hard. He knew, he just knew that Steve would rise to it, all shock and shivering wonder in his voice as the pain drove his pleasure higher, maybe high enough to break...

Tony didn't though. Not with Steve, not yet. It had been so long, but no, not yet.

He pressed a heated, sucking kiss to the spot instead, wrung a long groan from the root of Steve's cock, and licked the salt from his lips to whisper, "What do you want, Steve?"

And yeah, Tony probably should have expected that he’d get little more than a wordless croak and a hip-thrust in answer, but he had to chuckle anyway. He tightened his grip just a little, and gave Steve’s scarlet, straining cock another slick pull with his fist, then he slithered up to put his lips to Steve’s ear to whisper again. “What can I do to make it good for you?”

“I... you... already...”

Tony nipped at Steve’s ear, not the soft lobe, but up high, where the cartilage resisted his teeth. The sudden pain of it shocked Steve’s equivocation silent even as it made his cock lurch and drip precome over Tony’s knuckles. And wasn’t _that_ interesting...? “We don’t have to do anything more than this,” Tony warned, gentling his grip to a coy caress and tickling his thumb across Steve’s balls. “I’d be willing to keep you here awhile; hard and gasping and desperate to come...” he licked the ear he’d bitten, and pressed a kiss to the sweaty hair at Steve’s temple. “Bet we could do this all night...”

That won a breathless, half-desperate giggle, and Steve's arm bunching under Tony’s weight, turning at elbow and wrist to gently, shyly stroke at Tony's cock where it thrust warm and heavy against Steve's side. "I..." he licked his pink lips, shivered in a breath and tried again. "I don't beg," he said, and his voice was suddenly steady as steel, "and I really don't like mean names, or... or insults. Had enough of that as a kid, and it'll just make me wanna sock you in the nose, okay?"

Tony pulled a face. "Yeah, ok, no. Not into Thugplay here." Which made Steve giggle, which made Tony need to kiss him again. "Okay," he managed eventually, when they were both just a little breathless once more, "no humiliation kink, got it. But is it okay if I tell you when you've pleased me?" Steve's eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and a shivering stretch of pleasure worked its way seismically through him.

"I'll take that as a yes?" Tony murmured, threading his fingers into Steve's hair so he could get a solid grip.

"Yes," Steve sighed, even as he tugged, smiling against the hold, "Yes, that's good."

"Then this is what we'll do," Tony smiled, loosing his grip so he could pull himself up to sit against the headboard. "We'll take it easy this time," and no, Tony did not miss that pleased flicker of a glance at the implication of a next time, thank you. "I'll tell you what I want. If you like it, then we'll do it. If you're not sure, we'll try it, and you'll let me know, and if you don't like it, you tell me no, and we'll do something else."

Steve hitched up on one elbow, face puzzled as he nodded, as if he couldn't imagine a different way of going about things. "Sure, Tony," he said.

"Just like that," Tony grinned. "Now first, when was your last STD check?”

The flinch Steve gave when reminded of the practicalities was strong enough Tony could feel it all the way down. “I... it was while I was deployed,” he replied immediately, blue eyes too earnest to doubt. “but like I said, I haven’t been with anyone since then, so...”

“So you get to continue your fellatio rights without the benefit of latex, because I’m clean too,” Tony told him fondly. “Which is good, because I want you to put that gorgeous mouth back on me right now," he stroked the silky hair back from Steve's brow and smiled as he took firm hold again and made Steve's eyes go dark and wanting.

“Do I get to finish you off this time?” Steve dared, even as he let Tony steer him down by the hair. The stubborn challenge in those lips made Tony’s eager cock lurch, even as his own face spread around the joy of rising to it.

“It’s adorable how you say that like it’s a good thing, not the end of the night’s fun,” Tony smirked, lifting his cock away from his belly and rubbing the head along the soft, open swell of Steve’s lips. “I’ll tell you what you get when I want you to have it, gorgeous. Till then, you just enjoy yourself and leave the planning to me.”

“Hmmmnh,” Steve agreed, eyes falling closed as Tony pressed his cock inward along the strong curve of his tongue, until the press of his throat fluttered around the head, and good god, but that was a pretty sight. Tony let himself enjoy it for a long moment, and the rhythmic press-pull of tongue and suction as Steve held still and suckled at him, and hell yes, it was tempting -- the idea of spilling himself down that warm, eager throat. But long dry spell or not, Tony wasn’t a teenager any more, and it would be a damn shame to lose out on the rest of Tony’s brand new and specifically Steve-related wish list.

He tugged Steve into a nice, easy rhythm, and twisted back to reach the box he kept in the headboard. Lube in a lotion bottle (never let anyone say being able to get at your lube one-handed wasn’t an important feature!) and a sleeve of condoms that Tony could only hope were still within range of their expiration date. Steve didn’t have the right angle now for his earlier trick of seamlessly deep-throating Tony, but he was still giving it a solid try, and the occasional, violent flutter of Steve’s throat muscles fighting off a gag reflex was just about as distracting.

“Hand,” Tony gasped, tugging Steve up short on a downstroke, and waggling the lube bottle in answer to his confused glance. 

“Hmmn mm,” Steve responded eagerly, shifting to get his right hand up to Tony’s belly without letting go of the prick in his mouth. When Tony pumped a few good squirts across those fingers -- and what nice, thick fingers they were, too -- Steve immediately smeared them together, and hiked his ass up off the bed, reaching back as he spread his knees wide.

“No.” Tony gave Steve’s hair a quelling yank, and answered his confusion with a filthy grin. “That’s for me, not you.”

“Mmmn?”

“Yeah, really,” Tony agreed, spreading his thighs as wide as he could, and cocking his good knee up to make room. “You’re gonna do the heavy lifting tonight, big boy. If you think you can handle it, that is.” And oh yeah, that was the face of a man who never met a dare he didn’t take. Steve made his answer with action however, and it was Tony who hissed in a breath at the sudden, firm swipe of a wet finger across his entrance, and oh fuck yeah -- not shy at all.

“Good. God, that’s good,” Tony bore down with a groan as Steve sucked hard on his cock and slipped a finger into him with a long, easy slide. Just quick enough to bring a flutter of sting, but then it was a stretch of sweet sensation that made him want to arch and writhe like a cat. Steve’s knuckles pressed at the back of his balls, and Tony flexed his hand to cup Steve’s head as he purred, “Again...” And this time, he held Steve low over his cock, nose pressed to his belly, throat fluttering around Tony when his finger pressed home.

Steve didn’t pull back, didn’t resist the weight of Tony’s hand, didn’t squirm or plead with his eyes, he just waited, content to trust that Tony, barely more than a stranger to him, would let him breathe when it was needed. For a moment, the power of that trust, the heated weight of it made Tony’s vision glitter, and his balls draw up tight against Steve’s chin. It took several deep breaths and a vicious bite to his own lip to drag Tony back from that edge.

But then he drew Steve’s head back up, gave them both a second to gasp in the sweet reel of oxygen, and set him back to work with a murmured, “Good, very good. Now more...” 

Later on, Tony would think back over every detail of the encounter, and realize with a flush of awe, how perfectly Steve had behaved for him -- he’d followed where Tony led with an eager grace, let himself thoroughly enjoy being put to use without greedily pushing for more. He hadn’t even rutted against the bed as he opened Tony with two, and then three of his thick, long fingers, though his throat hummed and worked with moans, and his back glistened with sweat. When finally Tony growled “enough,” and slapped a condom into Steve’s other hand, he rose from the bed with his cock standing scarlet, damp, and eager.

“Bring that here,” Tony demanded, meaning both the cock, and the condom that Steve was unwrapping, and with no more hesitation than a quizzical glance, Steve obeyed. Then it was his turn to gasp, swear, and hang on tightly as Tony proved to himself that he did remember the trick of putting on a condom hands-free. Most of the way, anyhow. He was definitely not at the right angle to try getting his lips all the way down on Steve’s gracious plenty. Still, the tremble in Steve’s thighs as Tony finished the job with his fingers was reward enough for his effort.

“Ready to show me what you’re made of now?” Tony asked, tracing with his fingers the quivering tapestry of muscle that made up Steve’s abdomen. 

“May I?” Steve asked, even as he backed up to kneel between Tony’s spread thighs. “May I please fuck you, Tony?”

Tony closed his eyes and shivered. “Only if you get up here and kiss me with that filthy mouth once you’re inside,” he declared. Then he gulped out a long, quavering moan as Steve bent low, hitched Tony’s thighs up over his own, and pressed that glorious cock into Tony’s body at last. First the head, a sudden stretch, and then the long, heavy glide; muscles yielding to the thick press, fullness and heat stealing Tony’s breath away until finally they were pressed together, balls to balls, and Steve’s lips were on his own again.

“Like that?” Steve asked once Tony let him speak.

“Just,” Tony gasped, arching his back to better feel that magnificent weight inside him, “like that. Can you wait to come till I tell you?”

That tore a groan out of Steve that Tony could feel in his balls, but then he sucked in a deep breath, swallowed hard, and met Tony’s eyes with a shakily determined stare. “I’ll do my best.”

And Tony grinned, stroked a hand through Steve’s sweaty, hanging hair, and said, “Make me come. Then make me proud.”

Steve’s eyes shivered closed for a second, but then he pushed back, drawing his length out of Tony’s body, leaving an eager emptiness behind. Almost pulled clear, he stopped, licked his lips and asked, “How hard?”

“Hard,” Tony urged.

“How... How fast?”

Tony grinned. “Fast.”

And after that, it was all a matter of hanging on for dear life while Steve Yes-Really-Named-After-Grandpa Rogers proceeded to pound Tony like he meant to drive him through to the ground floor. It was staggering, it was terrifying, and Tony thrilled with every second of it, adrenaline and lust singing in his veins, making him feel more whole, more vibrantly alive than he’d felt for years. Heart racing, lungs straining, every muscle, every nerve in his body focused on meeting that strength, pacing that speed, opening himself to the potent memory of how goddamned good it could feel to let someone give him this. Steve was a relentless force of nature above, around, inside him, keening a high, tight whine in his throat as he fought to control himself with every potent stroke.

When Tony’s balls wrung up tight and hard, tension coiling like a trigger spring in his belly, and his cock bucking wet and ready between them, Tony dragged Steve down to him by the hair, kissed him hard, hard, hard: all teeth and tongue and more teeth again, and snarled, “You come when I do!”

The whine turned into a roar, Steve’s thrusts coming harder as Tony grunted, dug his nails into that broad, sweat slick back, and came like a goddamned hurricane. And even through the storm of it, Tony could feel Steve’s prick pulse inside him, rhythmic answer to his own body’s clasp and drag, as if, though stilled and pressed tight in orgasm, the fucking continued deep inside them both.

And then it was done. Steve slid his mouth away from Tony’s with a gutted sigh, and collapsed across him, catching his weight on his elbows until Tony dragged him the rest of the way down, and tucked the golden head low under his chin. “Good,” he huffed, stroking Steve’s sweat-damp, heaving shoulders as his heart began to slow inside him again, “That’s good. That’s Perfect.”

Steve hummed a sigh then, snuggled his head down against Tony’s chest, and clung like he wanted to belong nowhere else, and Tony decided that the practicalities of clean up and condom disposal could wait a bit. This moment here, cooling and sticky, and panting and perfect while the blood sang, and the air calmed between them, felt more important by far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? I told you it was explicit!  
> As always, much love to the commentors, especially in these troubled times of Civil War battle-camps. It's fun to come together in a nice little AU armistice for a bit, isn't it? #GoTeamStony!


	12. Cocktail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is measured loyalty, nostalgia, and the full duration of Sing, Sing, Sing.

***Phil***

Barnes takes twelve minutes in the resale shop. Not that Phil was timing him, of course, it’s just that _Sing, Sing, Sing,_ came on the radio just after he’d disappeared down the alley, and the song was nearly down to the final drumbeats by the time he turned up empty handed at the passenger’s side door.

Phil hastily turned the radio off. “Didn’t find the clothes?” he asked as Barnes slid into the seat and buckled up.

“Didn’t look,” he answered, more Brooklyn than Moscow in his accent tonight. “Too late for a retrieval anyway. Left shoe was sitting on the front counter, right next to the register.”

Definitely too conspicuous to go missing without comment then. Phil huffed a sigh. “And the transmitter?” Barnes just smirked, and held up a spent Widow’s Sting between two gleaming metal fingers. Which made Phil sigh again, imagining what Johnson would say about her ruined and abandoned tech. “And the books?”

“On here, I assume,” he replied, passing over a palm sized data-stick. It had a SHIELD logo engraved into the case, which Phil supposed would turn out to be a helpful red herring just in case the shop owner did turn out to be connected. “The laptop in the back office was on, so I just cloned the whole thing from the OS down.”

Phil took the data-stick and turned it over in his fingers. “You leave any traces?”

The look Barnes shot him then was eloquent with scorn, but he put it into words anyway. “Please. I may not be as good with code as the Widow is, but I can manage a little backup like this. Not even the SETI screen saver noticed I was there.”

“Just checking,” Phil replied mildly as he put Lola in gear and pulled easily away from the curb.

“You’re always checking,” Barnes grumbled, settling in.

“I know,” Phil kept his tone friendly, but arid. “It’s almost as if none of us know for sure what your remaining triggers are, and talking to you about what’s going on is the only way we have to know whether you’ve lost time again or not.” The argument between them was so old and worn by now that neither of them could quite manage the sharply edged irritation, and now just let it slide into the realm of ‘weary fondness’. It was easier, after all, and Phil got the sense that the occasional reality check was actually reassuring to Barnes, even after all these years. He liked to know they weren’t being complacent with him.

They rode in silence for awhile, the radio silent as a compromise between Barnes’ love of modern pop music and his suspicious resistance to indulging Phil’s love of vintage swing. That had caused more than one fight between agent and handler before Barnes began to believe that Phil wasn’t trying to trigger Bucky memories with his choice of music, he just genuinely liked the stuff. 

“This isn’t a good way back,” Barnes said after several minutes. The Russian winter had crept back into his voice, and the drape of his hair masked his face, but Phil knew that Barnes’ eyes would be moving quick, taking in every detail, analyzing every possible threat.

“We’re not going back yet,” he replied easily, as if they both were calm as a Sunday picnic. “There’s one more place I’d like to check out before we head in.”

Barnes was quiet for the rest of the ride. Not his customary ‘nothing worth saying’ quiet, either -- this was his ‘sniper’s nest’ kind of quiet. The sort of quiet that told Phil that even if he put the effort into getting a look at Barnes’ shrouded face right now, he’d find it as opaque and inscrutable as a kevlar mask. The sort of quiet that got heavier and more menacing with every turn Phil took toward the place he clearly did not want to go. One day, Phil mused, he’d have to let Barnes know just how telling that quiet was to anyone who knew the first thing about him. But that day wasn’t going to be today.

‘Today’, in fact, was only about an hour and a half old by the time Phil found a parking space to put Lola in. He unclipped his seat belt, and with his hand on the keys, paused. “You can stay with the car if you’d like,” he offered to the statue in his passenger seat. “I don’t expect this will take long...” The offer was genuine -- it really wasn’t a great neighborhood to be leaving a car like Lola unattended. But Barnes’ lip curled into a silent snarl at the supposed challenge to his courage all the same, and he unfastened his belt with a furious snap, and was out of the car before Phil even got the keys out of the ignition.

The White Eagle had clearly benefitted from the gentrification trend in this part of the city, though it put plenty of effort into making certain that passers-by knew it wasn’t just another hipster-fuelled, craft-beer engine. A thousand tiny details, from the rainbow flag pen at the Bouncer’s station, to the teddy bear in kink leathers tied suggestively to the security bars over the basement windows stood up to announce that this was a place that put Family first. Phil appreciated both the message, and the subtlety. It was hard to be subtle when your movement’s banner was a rainbow.

The Bouncer, a great wall of a man with a curly ginger undercut, and a unicorn tattoo on his neck, took one look at them -- Phil in his fitted suit, Barnes in his tactical black, and smirked. “Downstairs, I presume?”

Phil cut another glance at the teddy bear, but shook his head. “Just a drink this time.”

“Last call’s in half an hour, honey,” the bouncer smirked, waggling a rubber stamp between thumb and forefinger like a cigar. “But Downstairs serves till four. Private club.”

Behind him, Barnes shifted, a burring rustle of vinyl on kevlar. Phil smiled and took out his wallet. “Not this time. How much for two?”

The man managed to give a put-upon sigh even as he was clearly ogling Barnes, but he waved a passing hand all the same, saying “No one lets me have any fun. In you go then. No cover for Leatherbois and Hot Dads at this hour of night.”

The club was still half full, though it was clear at a glance that hardly anyone was sober, and quite a few were deeply impaired. Most of those were reeling about the postage-stamp sized dance floor though, grinding against anyone who’d grind back as the thumping bass and wailing guitars made their introductions for them. Phil could feel Barnes close the gap between them, his mute menace radiating as warmth from two inches behind Phil’s left shoulder as they made their way through the taproom’s constellation of tables, toward the bar, where two people hunched over drinks and a cell phone at one end, and at least three people were engaged in some level of congress in the shadows behind the waiter’s station at the other end. 

Phil chose the stool in the middle, and sat down, wallet beside his hand on the scarred wooden bartop.

“What are you doing?” Barnes leaned close to murmur as he sat beside.

Phil just took out his phone, opened the gallery, and began to scroll. He’d found the shot he wanted by the time the bartender wandered close and asked, “What’ll you have, boys?”

He turned the phone in answer, showed the bartender his favorite shot of Steve Rogers. It had been one he’d taken himself, immortalizing the wonder and awe that had spread across the man’s face the first time he got a look at Times Square in all its neon glory. It was a gorgeous shot, Rogers’ eyes wide as the sky, his lips up-tilted, slightly parted, neither gape, nor grin, but something of both. 

“Nice, if you like beefcake,” the barkeep answered with just a quick glance. “Myself, I like em a little older though.”

“Oh, he’s older than he looks,” Phil promised. “Seen him since last Thursday?”

The man tsked, and shook his head. “Now honey, how long d’you think I’d stay open if I tattled on my people like that?”

Phil allowed a smile, trying for resigned instead of triumphant. “I thought places like this ran on gossip and SoCo.”

“Gossip is for regulars, honey. You haven’t even bought your boy there a drink yet.”

“ _I don’t drink_ ” Barnes lied in Russian.

Phil was preparing to translate when the barkeep laughed, and replied in the same language, but with a decidedly Warsaw accent. “ _Who said you had to drink it? He will buy it, and you can sit and hold the glass._ ”

And with that, he stooped below the bar, rattled around for a second, and came up with a shotglass, and an unlabeled bottle that steamed an icy breath into the club’s sultry darkness. He plopped both in front of Barnes, and turned a wolfish grin to Phil. “Don’t give him too much of that before you take him Downstairs and beat the aggro out of him -- This vodka makes ‘em mean.”

Phil gave back his blandest smile as Barnes, glowering defiantly, sloshed the shotglass full, and tossed it back like a dare.

“I’m used to him this way,” Phil answered, putting his phone away and standing. “I don’t suppose you can do a French 75, can you?”

Phil’s request for the vintage cocktail made Barnes scoff loudly, even as it made the barkeep beam with delight. “Ooh, you do know the way to a mixologist’s heart, don’t you?” he crowed, flapping at them with both hands. “Go sit down, lovebirds. I’ll bring it out in a minute.”

Phil led the way to a secluded table with good sightlines. Barnes followed, bringing the vodka. Once they’d settled, Barnes poured himself another shot and asked, “How did you find out?”

“Educated guess.” Phil replied. He made it a policy to be as blunt and direct with Barnes as he could. That way neither of them had reason to suspect manipulation. “Your Thursday night reports always get a little thin around shift change. I guessed you were being coy about something, and since your reports usually put Rogers within a quarter of a mile of this area, I figured it had to be a place like this.” He waved a hand, taking in the dance floor and its half-dressed but very happy company. Even as he did so, a door across the room opened, and two women came up from below -- one’s arm curled protectively around the other, whose face was spread in the glassy but beatific smile of one who had more than enough endorphins to keep her warm without a jacket.

“A mistress or girlfriend, you’d have reported so we could run a security check on her,” he went on as the couple headed for the exit, “But a gay bar with a kinky club in the basement? I figured you’d probably just look into it on your own, so that nobody else would have to know he was coming here.” He snagged the bottle and glass and poured one out. The vodka smelled primal and terrifying, like prairie wildflowers hiding a sabre toothed cat. He sniffed it again, and put the shotglass down.

“It wasn’t,” Barnes said after a long silence. “He didn’t come here because of that.” The word ‘that’ came along with a telling nod toward the two women chatting with the doorman. Barnes picked up the full shotglass in his gloved left hand, held it up and peered through it like a kind of lens. “Place like this, the bouncer at the door looks at you. Talks to you. Flirts.” He tossed back the drink and poured another. “Remembers you. Not even I could could follow him in here without him knowing about it.”

Phil gave him a level look. “So Rogers just came...” he took in the club with a handwave “here to be alone?”

“That’s it,” Barnes agreed. “Alone coming in. Alone going out. Every time.” He poured another shot then, and cut his eyes at the barkeep, who was approaching with a single, very full champagne flute balanced on an old tin tray.

“So when my friend was in here,” Phil asked as the man set the drink down, “did he leave with anybody?”

The barkeep sighed, and braced one fist on his hip. “Honey, you’re gonna have to buy more than a coupla drinks if you’re shopping for that kind of gossip”

“So that kind of gossip is for sale then?” Phil shot back.

The man pretended to think, one finger tapping at his bearded chin. “Mmm, no,” he decided. “The drinks are for sale, and the Downstairs club memberships are for sale, and that’s it. But you can’t blame a guy for trying to make a profit before he throws you two suspicious characters outta his bar.”

Phil heard Barnes’ arm whir against the sleeve of his tac suit, and rushed to intervene. “No need, I promise,” he said, picking up his glass. “We’re not here to make trouble for anybody, and we’ll go in a minute.”

“Oh, I do believe you will,” replied the bartender ominously.

“Look.” That was Barnes, Brooklyn born and bred, and uncomplicated as the vodka in his fist. “He’s my brother,” he said to the bartender, with just a hint of loss haunting the word. “I just wanna know; if he didn’t leave alone, do you trust the person he left here with?”

The barkeep gave Barnes a long, and searching look. Then he huffed through his beard, shook his head, and said, “I trust him farther than I do you, cupcake,” as he turned back for the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we're flying without a net now, death-dumplings! We've just run through the 'already done and waiting to be posted' bits of story. Which means, if I get the next scene done tomorrow, that's when you'll get it, and if I don't, you'll just have to console yourselves with another viewing of Captain America 3: Civil War.   
> (Hint -- I'll do my best!)   
> In the meantime, may I draw your attention to this Official Sciencey Research that says that feedback comments make writers write faster...? (Points offscreen)


	13. Robots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is discussed autonomy, automation, cash flow, and task lighting.

***Tony***

Steve wasn’t in the bed when Tony woke up. Tony weathered a moment of disappointment over that, glowering at the 5:30 on the alarm clock’s entirely unreasonable face until he realized that there was a light on in the other room, and his chair had been brought over from the charging stand, and parked beside the bed. Listening hard, Tony caught the faint whirring of servos at work in the other room, and the occasional flutter of paper, and then he smiled.

As expected, when Tony got himself into the living room, he found Steve in the recliner, rosy and golden in the low light of a single lamp, wearing his own blue t shirt and a pair of Tony’s boxers as he peered at one of the promotional pamphlets that Tony had picked up Friday. 

“So,” he said, smiling when Steve startled upright, “You thinking welding and fabrication, or more like the coding or drafting classes? I’d suggest auto repair, but that can be hard on the hands, and I like yours the way they are.”

“Sorry Tony,” Steve said as he rolled his chair around to the reading corner, “I didn’t mean to snoop, it’s just I couldn’t sleep anymore. I usually go for a run around now, but, well. And when I went into your kitchen to see about some coffee, your lamp kept throwing these flyers at me.”

Tony glanced over to the breakfast bar and grinned. “That’s just Dum-E’s idea of home security, I think,” he said, watching the helper bot wave his manipulator arm. “He’ll stop once you’ve been properly introduced. Probably.”

“Your lamp’s named Dummy?” Steve wondered, following the line of Tony’s gaze.”

“Well, he would be a lamp if he was brighter,” Tony said fondly. “As it is, he’s just a charming quirk of artificial intelligence, so long as you’re willing to define ‘intelligence’ loosely.” He gave a nod to U, who was dutifully illuminating Steve’s reading material without any menacing behavior. “His brother seems to think you’re okay, if that makes you feel better.”

That made Steve look up in surprise, squinting past the worklight to examine U’s manipulator arm. “Well I’ll be,” he murmured, reaching up to trace one of the grippers, and then grinning when the claw gently closed on his thumb and gave it a little shake. “You built him, didn’t you?” Steve asked, “Both of them. And your chair... That’s what you do here, when you aren’t teaching, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well it’s better than drinking,” Tony answered, realizing only after he’d said it just how bitter and defensive that had sounded. “I specialized in robotics when I was at MIT,” he offered by way of an olive branch. “Among other things. These guys were actually supposed to be my lab helpers, to hold up heavy things when I was welding, fetch tools when my hands were full -- I even tried to teach Dummy to cook once. Only once.” He had to stop there, swallow against the quaver in his voice that rose up on him every time he was reminded how close he’d come to losing them too. If U and Dum-E had been at his ARC workshop instead of at home, they’d have been seized along all the rest.

From the corner of his eye, Tony saw Steve’s head lower, and turned to find him staring way too hard at the publicity flyer in his hands, that pretty blush staining the creamy skin of his all the way down his chest.

“What?” Tony laughed, rolling closer so he could jostle the man’s knee with his own. “It's ok, Steve,” he said when that won him a flickering, sidelong glance, “you can say what's on your mind.”

“It’s just,” he began, then halted, biting his lip. “It’s amazing. You're... you're just amazing, is all. It's... it's humbling to me.”

Tony felt his smile tug downward a little. “What, because I survived?” he asked, curling a hand over his bad knee.

But Steve shook his head at once, so earnest you could break a tooth on him. “No, because you've thrived,” he said. “It's different. These robots, the chair, the Center. All the things you’ve done, created, to make your life work the way you want it to.”

That caught Tony up a little bit, but he clamped down on the urge to deflect and really made himself look at Steve, to comb that handsome face for any sign of pity or condescension. As if aware of his misstep, Steve chinned up to the examination and said, “I know people who’ve been through loss like yours,” he said, and Tony couldn’t help remembering last night’s stories about Steve's buddy James. “It’s not a contest or anything, I know that. Every survivor is different, and they do what they’ve gotta to get through the bad spots, but you... you seem happy. Or like you want to be happy, and you’re working toward it, and that,” he shrugged. “That gives me hope, I guess.”

There was only honest admiration in those blue eyes, perhaps a bit of gratitude as well, and Tony found it more than a little bit surprising how deeply that warmed him, how quickly it disarmed the stinging words that usually rose to his tongue when someone wanted to tell him how well he was getting along. He sighed, turned his chair and hauled himself out of it, and into the sofa with a sigh. “I guess I got all my screaming at God done early on,” he said as the silence stretched out long between them. “Three months with the Ten Rings, and another three healing up from their tender mercies in a dirt poor village where everyone was hungry and scared, and nobody had more than ten words of English, but they took care of me anyway,” Tony laced his fingers together, flexed them against each other to quell the jittering urge. “That makes you figure out pretty quick whether you're glad to be alive, or mad about it.” 

“And you were glad.” It wasn’t a question, and Tony was grateful for that. 

“I guess I was,” he said, leaning into the arm of the sofa and shoving a pile of student workbooks off to make room beside him. “When it all came down to shell casings, being mad just didn't have the staying power it had when my whole world was parental drama and corporate combat.” He reached out a mute invitation to Steve, who immediately shifted from the recliner to the sofa, leaning warm and solid against Tony’s side, as if he’d always belonged there.

“First thing when I got back to the states,” Tony said, cuddling close, “I got a cheeseburger. It was just the most disgusting thing I could remember eating in my life, but goddamn, was I glad to have it. I guess that would be my watershed moment. All the rest, the walker, the Center, teaching, they were just the things that drifted by while I was figuring out what to do next. And before you go looking up to me, I want it known that I’m still not sure how to answer that question.”

“They're good things though,” Steve said, nodding toward the abandoned flyer. “I looked the Center up online, read what’s on your website while I waited for you to call. This is good work you’re doing here. Important work.”

Huh. Didn’t _that_ sound loaded. Steve’s face was pensive in the low morning light, eyes downturned, as if examining the worth of his two, big hands. Tony could think of a few thousand things to say to shake Steve out of whatever dark place it was he’d wandered, but there was something in the turn of Steve’s lip, the crease of his brow that stopped the words on his tongue, and made him wait the silence out instead.

“I’d forgotten how good this can feel, you know?” Steve said, glancing up from his contemplation at last. “Not waking up alone. I know last night wasn’t some kind of a favor you did for me or anything, and people say it’s rude to thank someone after sex, but I’m... I’m really, really grateful, Tony.”

“You trusted me with your submission,” Tony smirked, ruffling Steve’s soft hair into even wilder spikes. “I kinda feel like I should be the one saying thank you for that.” 

But gravely earnest, Steve shook off both the compliment and the teasing tone. “I spend all day, every damned day, around people who want me for what I have, or what I can do for them, or who are there only because they’re following orders,” he said. “I can be as friendly to them as I know how, but at the end of the day, they’re still -- all of them are still after the dancing monkey in the expensive suit. That’s...” he shook his head, and set his hair to rights with one swipe of his hand. “It gets pretty lonely, living like that.”

“Oh sweetheart,” Tony sighed, shaking his head. “I grew up with money. I know those feels. But what made you come to the Eagle at all? I mean, look at you --” and here, he ruffled Steve’s hair askew again, just to get a grin out of him. “You can’t get a drink at Starbucks without finding a barista’s phone number on it, can you? You hardly need to hang out at a shady queer dive to get a little willing company.”

Steve looked down, ears pink. “I can’t... um. I can’t do that. Go with people I’ve only just met, and just...” he waved a hand vaguely toward the bedroom before using it to fix his hair again. Then he gave a sulky little glower when Tony laughed.

“Hon, by my watch, you and me have known each other for less than two days, and believe me, you did just fine.”

“No,” Steve protested, deflecting Tony’s attempt to fuck with his hair again. “I mean I knew you better than that.”

“Oh ho, so you’ve been watching me, have you?”

“A little,” Steve admitted shyly. “I mean, not in the creepy way, but... yeah. I noticed you at the club, and you intrigued me, so... I kept an eye on you.” Tony met his wary glance with his biggest grin, propped his chin in one hand, and settled in expectantly. 

“People smile after they’ve talked to you,” Steve chuckled after a moment. “Real smiles, not put-on, performance smiles. It’s in the eyes, the difference. And you...” he reached out, stroked a curl of hair off Tony’s brow, and let his palm linger on the curve of his cheek. “You have kind eyes. And beautiful hands. I noticed your hands first off. They look like a musician’s hands, or a painter’s, from a distance.” Steve dropped his gaze and his caress both to the hand Tony had left curled in his lap, lifting it gently, turning it to the warming light from the windows. “Still do up close, but the scars and calluses show just how hard you work with them.”

Tony breathed a shiver and let his eyes slip closed. “Jesus, Steve, if you’re trying to get me up for round two, I’m game, but it’s gonna have to be quick. Jarvis never lets me sleep in on weekdays.” Steve dropped Tony’s hand at once, but Tony grabbed for it before he could retreat. “Kidding, sweetheart, he laughed. “I know your motives are pure.”

Steve looked away with a wry twist of a smile, and Tony peered at him, wondered if the pink on his face and ears was maybe more pleasure than embarrassment now. “You like that, don’t you?” he ventured. “The pet names?”

Steve gave a one-sided shrug. “Sometimes. I don’t like it outside of this though.” another glance at the bedroom door made his meaning plain. “I mean, when strangers or acquaintances won’t use my proper name it bothers me. Had my fill of cute names when I was a kid, you know?”

Tony grinned. “But in the bedroom, I get to call you sweetheart, honey, and dollface, right?”

“Maybe not that last one,” Steve murmured with a wince.

“Okay sugarpie,” Tony laughed, and threw an arm across those broad, sturdy shoulders. “So tell me...” He waited for Steve’s glance, and the wary nod that followed it before continuing. “Why pick me? Why my table?” He shook his head and thumbed Steve’s lips still so he could finish. “I know I’m not the only regular at the Eagle who has good hands and a compulsion to make people like him, so why, when everyone there had been thirsting for you for weeks, did you decide to come sit with me?”

Steve bit his lip when Tony’s thumb moved off of it, considering for a long moment. “It didn’t seem like you wanted me,” he answered at last.

Tony blinked. “It didn’t? Because I did. I mean I obviously did want you. You really couldn’t tell?”

Steve gave that bashful little half shrug again. “No. It seemed like you couldn’t care less.”

And Tony sat back at that, unsure of what he could say besides, “huh.”

“It wasn’t like I was trying to change your mind or anything,” Steve went on. “Even aside from how I’m crap at talking to people I like, there’s about a hundred good reasons why I shouldn’t be doing anything like this at all,” he waved vaguely at the two of them, the bedroom, the robots, “but what I really wanted that night was to talk to someone who wasn’t trying to get into my pants for once.”

Tony didn’t bother to stifle his chuckle at that. “Well I hate to say so, darling, but you failed pretty badly on that account. I was just as into you as all the rest, and look” he snaked a finger in to give the waistband of the boxers a snap, “you’re the one who got into _my_ pants.”

“Hilarious,” Steve deadpanned. “You still played it cool though. And even if you hadn’t asked for my number, I enjoyed talking to you that night. I probably would have gone to sit with you again on Thursday just for the conversation.”

“Admit it now,” Tony pressed, leering as he tried for another snap, “You just want to see me in the Tiara.”

Steve easily fended Tony off though, and managed a shorts-snap of his own in retaliation. “I admit no such thing. But you’d better share pictures if you put it on when I’m not around!” Things devolved into a gently flirty roughhousing for awhile, dying down into cuddling again once both of them were giggling too hard to continue. 

“So do I get to ask you questions now?” Steve asked after awhile, sitting up and righting his hair again with maddening ease. 

Tony stretched into the space Steve had yielded, and offered back a grin. “There you go, ruining our ‘intimate strangers’ paradigm with your curiousity,” he shook his head in theatrical disappointment. “I’ll give you three questions.”

“Three? Gosh, that’s generous,” Steve snarked back.

“I know,” Tony smirked. “But I figure my aura of mystery can probably take it. Now choose wisely, young Padawan!”

“Okay,” Steve laughed. “Why didn’t you talk to me at the Eagle, if you were interested?”

“Oh ho, tricky, going for the two-part answer,” Tony crowed, trying and failing to poke Steve in that ticklish spot under his ribs again. He settled back against the arm of the sofa when Steve fended him off, and let his face relax into sobriety. 

“At first, I left you alone because I know what hunted looks like on a person’s face, even when they’re smiling and being gracious to hide it,” he said. “I didn’t want to be part of the problem that seemed like it might drive you away.”

Steve looked down, bashful. “I didn’t mind all the flirting, I just...”

“- didn’t really like it either, I could tell,” Tony finished for him, fiddling with the hem of his shorts to give his hands something to do. “And the second reason is because the wheelchair tilts the playing field for me.” Steve gave him a querying look, and Tony sighed. “People either are more into me than they would have been because of the ‘plucky survivor’ idea, or they feel like they’re doing me some kind of a favor by paying attention to me, or they’re turned off by the idea that I might be breakable. It kind of sucks no matter which way it rolls.”

“Yeah,” Steve sighed, reaching for Tony’s hand. Tony steeled himself to pity at that, but the look he got when he met Steve’s eye instead was simmering with a deep, banked anger that strangely made it easier to let his own annoyance slide. 

“You didn’t really seem to think twice about the chair though,” he said. “Not aside from noticing it was there, so that was a point in your favor.” Then he waved the whole pitiful mess aside with an airy hand and demanded, “Next question.”

Steve let it go with a grudging smile. “Okay. This might seem... um,” he ran a hand through his hair again, almost dithering with a sudden, nervous energy. “Okay, it’s weird, and you might not like it, but I’m just gonna ask anyhow,” he declared, then turned on the sofa and reached for the discarded flyer. “Could I maybe help you fund the Arts Center? Because I can tell it’s good work you’re doing here, teaching important things to people who are probably never gonna be able to afford college, and your website said the Center operates on tuition and donations, but I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to buy, um,” the flush on his cheeks went bright as Steve waved a hand between them and stammered, ”- _this_ , because that’s really not it at all, I swear, it’s just that, well Tony, you’re building something good here. You’re making people’s lives _better_ , and-” He stopped abruptly, but only because Tony’s fingers were on his lips again, and if he didn’t, they were gonna be in his mouth.

“Shhh, honey,” Tony grinned at the anxious wrinkle between Steve’s eyebrows. “Shh. I’m going to tell you yes.” The eyebrows raised, wrinkle banished, but Tony pressed again to stall whatever he was going to say. “Not because you’ve convinced me of the purity of your intentions or anything though. I’m going to tell you yes, because I can already tell how stubborn you are, and I’m pretty sure if I tell you no, you’ll just find a way to dump money on me from a third hand or fourth hand source. Am I right?” Only then did he lift his hand away.

Steve shifted uncomfortably, but held his gaze when he looked up at last. “I wouldn’t. Not if you really didn’t want me to help, I promise. It’s just that if a place like this had been here in New York when I was a kid, I’d have-”

Tony pressed his fingers again, smirking. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Okay then, here’s the deal. You can donate funds to the Center.” He gave those soft lips one tap, and then leaned away. “ _Only_ to the Center. I’m not taking any of your money for me, because despite evidence to the contrary,” and here he gestured grandly to the cluttered, mismatched, shabbily well loved wreck that was his living space, “I have all the money I need. Are we clear, Mister Big Bucks?”

Steve caught Tony’s hand and brought it back to his lips for a kiss. “Perfectly,” he said. “You don’t need money anyhow. Not with Captain America on Blue Velvet hanging over there to watch every single thing you do.”

Tony belted a laugh and pushed Steve away by his looming, leering face. “Okay, okay, that’s enough of that, American Psycho.” In the bedroom, Tony’s alarm began to softly beep, and Tony gave up a sigh as he disentangled himself and reached for his wheelchair. “Welp, that’s my half hour warning. If Jarvis doesn’t hear my shower running within the next fifteen minutes, he’s gonna come up here with a gallon of tea, a stack of dry toast, and a mustard poultice, and I guarantee neither of us wants to deal with that, so if you’ve got another question, you’d better ask it while we get dressed.”

Steve gave a shudder and a look of experienced horror when Tony mentioned the poultice, and cleared out of Tony’s way to let him get back into his mobile chair again. But then he dropped back to the sofa once more, as if it was important to him that they be eye to sober eye for this one, and said. “Can I... Can we do this again sometime?”


	14. Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is found a run, a gun, and only one shoe.

***Steve***

For reasons that needed no explanation, Steve was feeling pretty damn good by the time he left Tony to his shower. He’d smelled toast cooking in the apartment across the atrium when he’d slipped down the stairs, but Steve’s luck had held, and he’d made it to the street without having to face down Tony’s mysterious and apparently fearsome neighbor. That was a confrontation Steve was more than ready to leave to some later day, if he could manage it.

It was a fine morning, crisp and bright, with a sky the kind of blue that New York didn’t often see, and the damp of a heavy dew clinging to the long shadows as the sun made its way up through the skyscrapers. Steve headed for the subway station with a spring in his step and a ridiculous urge to whistle held firmly behind his teeth -- this was New York, after all, too much cheer before rush hour was always held in deep suspicion. But he hadn’t gone more than a block or two before he realized what a shame it would be to spend any part of a morning like that underground. And it wasn’t all that far to Brooklyn on foot, especially if he took it at a run. Heck, he’d probably even wind up getting there faster than if he hailed a cab at this hour, anyway. And well... he could stand to burn off a little bit of energy before he took himself back to face the music at White Star.

Maybe he’d pick up some bagels on the way as a peace offering, too.

He let that idle notion occupy his mind as he ran -- not full out, he wasn’t as reckless as all that, after all -- but hard enough and long enough to keep his blood up and his skin warm as he put the miles and the Village behind him. He considered, as he went, just what kind of effort it might take if he were to decide to make this trip by way of rooftops alone. He’d certainly be able to make the jumps at most side streets, and probably at a few of the major intersections as well, if he judged his run-up right. And too, if he tried it at night, and wore black tac gear, he might actually not be noticed while he was at it. Not that his life held much call for that kind of rowdiness these days, but there was only so many times a fella could run around Central Park without the serum in his veins begging for a little adventure.

He smirked to himself at that, thinking of Tony, and the sharp little thrill his captive heart had given when Steve had walked away from his customay spot at the bar and pulled out a chair at the enigmatic man’s table instead. Maybe this thing with him, whatever it turned out to be, would be what Steve needed to settle in, cool his blood, and find something worthwhile to do with himself in this weird world he’d woken up to. The thought set up a pleased sort of hum under his skin, like a buzz he could faintly feel through the pulse and thrust of his muscles, and the rhythmic slap of his feet. 

Happiness? Well maybe it was, at that, but it could just be the long-forgotten taste of freedom on his tongue too.

Steve was still exploring that notion when he arrived back at the vintage shop, and so it was with perhaps a bit less caution than was warranted, he ducked into the alley and made the climb back up to the roof again. The transformer box was sun-warm already, dusty and dull from the rains of a dozen years, but it opened up with barely a squeak for him -- he’d taken care to oil it well when he’d first come up here to break the lock and get it open.

The yellow and red caution sign glared at him as he reached in past the wires and collected his bag of clothes, but Steve just gave it back a smirk. He’d counted on the metal box to block the passive signals from whatever bugs White Star had put in his clothes, and on the electrical interference to baffle whatever active trackers they’d had on him, and to judge from a whole weekend free from the crawling, itchy feeling of watching eyes on the back of his neck, Steve figured it had worked pretty well.

Except for the problem of his missing left shoe.

“Darn it,” he muttered, sticking his head into the humming transformer box in case it had fallen farther back behind the machinery. “These stupid things are too expensive to...” 

There was a certain sound that all soldiers learn by heart. It was a jarring kind of ratcheting metal on metal sound that would put anybody with two good ears on edge, even if they hadn’t ever seen a slug of lead and copper blast a hole in a soldier and leave him bleeding in the dust. It cut through the electric hum of the machine before him, and put every hair on Steve’s body on end.

“Looking for this?” A girl’s voice, all smirk and smugness. 

Steve carefully backed out of the transformer box, and put on his very best simple-but-pretty face as he turned. It was the shopgirl behind the gun, the rising sun playing warm light and harsh shadows across her dark skin and hair, gilding fire along her silk flowered dress. She was holding his right shoe in her free hand, waggling it back and forth like a lure, so Steve let himself smile and take a step forward. “Yeah,” he said, as if the gun wasn’t making his heart thunder for a fight, “Thanks. I’da hated to have to break up the set-”

“Stop,” she said, all teasing gone from her voice as she backed up and sighted the gun on his face. He stopped, and noted with some interest that it took her several seconds to find that teasing grin or hers again. “You might have gotten away with it, you know,” she said at length, “I might have just thought you were weird, coming in in Armani to buy tee shirts, jeans, and Chucks, but I wouldn’t have really remembered you.”

“You wouldn’t?” Steve pretended to be disappointed. That was an awfully big gun for a hand as small as hers, especially with the added weight of that silencer hanging off the end.

“Nope. This city’s full of rich, white pretty boys like you,” she said, the shoe dangling from her fingers now, as if she might accidentally drop it. “I mean you’re cute enough, but not in any way I particularly like. I’d have forgotten all about you, only there’s motion activated cameras over there,” she pointed with the shoe at the corner of the roof, “and there,” another point toward the stair access, “and they stream the footage straight to my computer. So imagine my surprise to see you breaking the lock on that transformer, and stripping down to your altogether right here on my roof.” She shook her head and made a tsking noise.

Steve let his smile grow wider, shifting his weight to idly rest one hand on his hip, the other gripping his shoe by the toe. “You’re awfully worried about a little trespassing, ma’am.”

She smiled back at him, declaring with her eyes that she wasn’t taken in by his act at all. “And you’re awfully calm about a gun in your face, Captain Rogers.”

He blinked, and her smile grew wider. “What’s wrong,” she teased, “Do you think I’ll miss at this range?”

“I think you don’t much want to shoot me at all, ma’am, or you’da done it before you spoke up,” he answered her straight. “Which means you’ve got it figured that I’m more valuable to you alive.”

“Actually, you aren’t,” she mused, tilting her pretty head to the side, as if she meant to draw him, and was checking her perspective. “The bounty’s out for information leading to the recovery of your corpse. But I suspect that handing over a live and breathing Captain America will probably loosen SHIELD’s wallet quite a bit.”

Ah hah. “SHIELD’s wallet,” he asked, “or Hydra’s?” 

She shrugged. “Who bothers asking these days? They’re pretty much the same. Now,” she said, sobering, “you lead the way to the stairs. Slow and easy, mind you. I’d rather put a couple of rounds through your gut than bother with chasing you in these shoes, so remember that if you’re tempted to get clever.”

Steve did as she asked, mostly. As his path took him by the streetside facade of the building, he hesitated, peering down. “Huh...”

“I said move,” the girl demanded, not quite so far behind him now.

“Is that _your_ Smart Car down there?” Steve asked as if he hadn’t heard her. “The teal one, with the Sanskrit on the hood?”

Her face went tense, worried, and she edged toward the wall nervously. “What about it,” she began, leaning to steal a glance for herself.

It was then that Steve threw his shoe at her, clipping her hard across the temple as he flung himself backward in a roll. The gun thudded once as she fell, but then he heard it skitter across the tar-paper and clack to a stop by the brick ledge. 

The girl lay stunned and blinking at the sky when Steve reached her, only weakly resisting as he pried open her jaw and ran a knowing finger along her back teeth. But all her teeth were her own, none weak and ragged and filled with cyanide. A contractor then; a remora hoping for an in with the big sharks, which he found rather sad, despite his relief that she wouldn’t necessarily draw a lot of notice when she didn’t open her shop on time today.

“So, out of curiosity,” Steve said to her as he bound her hands with his tie, and knotted his dress socks together to form a gag, “Do they still honor citizen’s arrest these days? Not that I’m going to let you run off and tattle on me either way, it’s just I figure my lawyer will probably want a bit of heads-up for whether he’s gonna charge you with attempted kidnapping, or prepare a defense for me on actual kidna-”

As he’d expected, she kicked out at him, her sharp little kitten heels dragging sharply along his inner thigh as he fended her away from his crotch. She was on her feet in a flash, and scrambling for the fallen gun, but Steve lunged out, caught her by the ankle, and then watched with chagrin as her resulting tumble wound up with her diving headlong into the building’s heat exchanger with a clang. This time, she didn’t get back up, and didn’t stir when he rifled her pocket for her keys, or even when he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder like an extra duffle bag.

In the darkness of the locked up clothing shop, Steve took care of a bit of housekeeping; set the computer to deleting everything but the operating systems, and downloading the online phone book that nice barista had shown him on Sunday morning. He figured that ought to do for the security footage, assuming she hadn’t already sent it to anybody. This girl didn’t strike him as the type who’d settle for a picture of a catch if she stood a chance at the real thing though, so he’d just have to hope for the best.

He changed clothes quickly, picking out a new tie and socks from the store, and taking care to leave money for them, in case someone honest also worked there. Then he wiped the place down, packed up the computer, gun, and the remains of the rooftop security cameras he’d ripped from their mountings, and left; shabby clothes and sneakers in a plastic bag, unconscious would-be assassin tucked up snug in his duffle. He put both into the teal Smart Car, and crammed himself behind the wheel to take them all back to Manhattan.

This, he figured, would be a better peace offering than bagels any day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, you didn't forget that Raina was gonna be in this too, did you?  
> One scene left in this installment, my Adders. Many thanks as always to those who've been reading along and cheering me on toward the end -- your words give me life!


	15. Tally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which is considered finances, flowers, ORG charts, and the tao of poolside tanning.

*** Barton ***

Monday mornings, Clint had come to believe, were best spent beside the pool whenever possible.

He had come to this belief lately in his life; only, in fact, once he’d allowed himself to be seduced over to White Star’s side of the playing field, and more to the point, the really nice pool out back of Howard Stark’s place. It wasn’t actually Clint’s fault, when you came right down to it, because Howard himself had been the one to set up most of his Monday mornings around work that could be done beside the pool in his dressing robe. And if his protection detail included staying nearby, on a pool lounger, in his swim trunks, well who was Clint to argue?

It was a tough job, but he was up to the challenge. Even after the protection detail had shifted from Stark to Rogers, Clint had done whatever he could to maintain his weekly devotions to the Saints of towel, oil, and lounge chair. Especially when there was a shitstorm brewing over at headquarters, and nothing he could add to the atmosphere besides another butt available for the chewing. He figured if anybody needed a slice of his particular butt, they’d know where to find him, so it was best he should stay put and make some good use of sunscreen while everyone else panicked.

And so it was that he happened to be the only Agent on the grounds when it counted. Because of _course_ he was.

The tablet beside his lounger buzzed twice, not the gentle suggestion of a text or e mail, but the angry hornet rattle that dared you to ignore it and get stung for your neglect. He was tempted anyway, until the second buzz came in the company of a not-so-distant car horn beeping.

“The hell?” he grumbled, turning his tablet away from the glare and squinting at the completely unfamiliar hippie-clown-car that sat idling in the driveway just outside the manor’s gates. He tapped the intercom function on and signed. “No thanks, we’ve got all the Krishna we need.”

“Mr. Barton?” The immediate reply shook off the last of Clint’s sunbaked doze, and shocked him upright as Captain Steve Rogers leaned out of the window and squinted grinning up at the gate camera. “Sorry to bother you, but could you buzz me in? I need to drop something off before I head uptown.” 

“Where the hell did you get that car, and didn’t they have one in your size?” Clint blurted, jamming his feet into flip flops as he hit the gate release.

“It’s a loaner,” came the reply. “Is. Uh. Is James up there at the house right now?”

“No, he’s out looking for you, like everybody else!” 

But by then the gate had finished opening, and Clint’s only reply was an engine whine and a crunch of itty bitty tires on the gravel drive. He grabbed his gun and his phone and took off around the house at a run.

One thumb press brought up Tasha’s phone, ringing to voicemail at once, like it always did. “He’s here,” Clint reported as soon as the beep stopped, “He’s alone, and uninjured far as I can tell, and ... well hell, that’s the same suit he wore outta here last Friday,” he added as he came around the hedges and caught sight of Rogers unfolding himself from that ridiculous toy car and trying to smooth his clothes down before he reached into the back seat and drew out... a kicking, swearing rucksack.

“Uh...” Clint dithered, completely unprepared for this turn of events. “Maybe you better page James, okay? Or Fury maybe. Or... y’know, maybe everyone.”

“Hi Clint,” Rogers waved, slinging his thrashing luggage over one shoulder and brandishing a waxed paper bag in the other hand. “I brought bagels if you want one.”

“Uh, sure,” Clint shrugged, because hey -- bagels. “You get any sesame?”

Rogers grinned in reply, and lobbed the bag Clint’s way. “Yeah, they’re my favorite too. Hey, can you get the door for me? I don’t want her to whack her head on the way through.”

“Who is ‘her,’ by the way, and is there some reason she can’t walk on her own?” Clint asked, jogging up the front steps and muscling the big formal doors open. His hearing aids picked up a muffled grunting that sounded a lot like it wanted to be furious cursing, but was having trouble enunciating around something thick and fluffy stuffed in the curser’s mouth.

“Well, I’m sure she thinks she could,” Rogers grinned, all bright teeth and wholesome innocence, except for the glint in his eyes that gave away how much damned fun he was having at everyone else’s expense. “but truth be known, she took a pretty bad fall before we came over from Brooklyn. I don’t feek safe letting her walk on her own just until we have one of our people take a look at her.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” Clint picked up the thread of his reasoning at once, “You know most accidents do happen in the home, right? We’ll definitely need to have our people check her over and make sure she’s okay.” He nudged the kitchen door open with his foot and held it back while Rogers edged the bag -- thrashing madly now, and all but squealing with outrage -- through. 

Then Clint got busy with the bagels while Rogers secured his ahem-guest to one of the barstools, and finally unzipped the duffel to reveal her flushed, rumpled, and furious face, and, “Holy shit, is that _Flowers_?” he blurted.

“Oh, you know her then?” Rogers asked, tipping the stool precariously onto its back legs when Flowers got a look at Clint and immediately started thrashing again. 

“Know her?” Clint laughed, and slipped the bagels into the toaster oven. “Hell, man, I’ve shot her twice, this year alone! How the hell did you corner her alive?”

“I let her corner me,” Rogers shrugged back, a satisfied smile tickling the corner of his mouth as he balanced the back of her barstool in one big hand. “But if she’s that slippery, maybe we’d better secure her someplace more-”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. The Widow’s on her way,” Clint said, and as though summoned by the power of her handle alone, Natasha appeared at the kitchen door with three operatives and an analyst behind her. “She’ll take care of the interrogation, and you and me can take care of breakfast.” Clint didn’t tell Rogers that breakfast was also going to be a debriefing, but from the knowing look in that blue eye, he figured he wouldn’t have to.

“Hawkeye,” Natasha said as she came into the room, but her eyes were all for the Captain.

“Heya, Widow,” he grinned back, “Looks like Cap brought us Flowers as a peace offering.” 

Okay, it was cheap, but at least it made Rogers laugh. And it made Natasha freeze, her eyes narrowing as she took in the captive’s face, furious and defiant, and then scared when the satisfied smile spread across the Widow’s face.

“Apology accepted,” she said, flicking a glance toward Rogers before making a tentative gesture at his captive. “May I?”

“Be my guest.” Rogers nodded graciously and tipped the stool upright, stepping away from the island, the captive, and the operatives who were even now crowding into the kitchen like kids on Christmas morning. “I’ll just leave you to it then,” he said, catching Clint’s eye and tipping a nod toward the back door and the pool deck beyond. Clint nodded, then turned back to watch the bagels toast as Captain America slipped away.

There was cream cheese in the bag, so Clint put that on one of the bagels, buttered the other one, and grabbed the coffeepot and a mug for Rogers, more or less ignoring the impromptu interrogation being set up behind him. Until he turned to go, and found Natasha directly behind him, hands braced on her hips, and eyes fiercely calculating. “You stay on Rogers,” she warned. “If this is just a distraction...”

He leaned in and dropped a kiss on her nose -- or rather he leaned in and smooched the air when she evaded him, but it had the intended effect of cutting off her threat regardless. “It isn’t,” he told her, “Rogers didn’t have to come back here at all. He coulda left Flowers outside the Manhattan office with a bow on her ass, but it’s just like you called it --” and here, he boosted the plate of bagels in his hand by way of proof. “His point’s been made. Now you get to figure out what the fuck Flowers’ deal is, while I debrief the Raccoon Whisperer. And when Barnes turns up, we get to finally find out what happens when those two relics actually _talk_.” Then he ducked out the door, neatly evading her grab for his bagel, and not even feeling bad about it -- he’d seen two pumpernickels in the bag, after all, so she wouldn’t even have to share hers with Barnes.

Rogers was waiting for him in the late spring sunshine, rolling his sleeves up over his forearms, with his jacket and vest folded neatly over one of the loungers, and an unfamiliar green tie over the lot. “Thanks, Barton,” he said, taking the plate when Clint thrust it at him and turned to pour a cup out of the pot. “Which one’s yours?”

“Whichever you don’t want,” Clint said, beaming as he offered the cup, “I like em both ways.”

Rogers’ lip twitched as if he got the joke, but the wicked glint was gone almost before Clint had seen it. “One of each then,” he said, setting the plate down and waving the coffee away. “Say, you know the access code for the garage, right?”

“Yeaaaahhh,”Clint answered dubiously.

Rogers shrugged one shoulder, and rubbed a bashful hand over the back of his neck. “Well, I know you’re probably supposed to find out where I’ve been and all,” he admitted, “it’s just I was thinking maybe we should move her car out of the driveway first. Just in case someone sees it from the street, and recognizes it.”

Clint shrugged. It wasn’t a very likely scenario, given the curvature of the drive and distance from the gate, but smart money would have a metric fucktonne more cars converging on the Stark mansion from every point of the city soon, and they were going to need every inch of driveway space they could get before all was said and sifted. So, “Sure. You wanna bring it around?”

That won a grimace and a headshake by way of reply, and Rogers dug the keychain out of his pocket and passed it over. “If you wouldn’t mind? I get a crick in my neck just trying to get into that tiny thing.”

Clint looked at the keys dangling in the sunshine, then gave Rogers another once-over, and set the coffeepot down. “Or you could just ask me to open up Stark’s workshop for you,” he offered. “I mean, it’s kinda yours anyway, so it’s not like I’m particularly invested in keeping you out of it or anything.” Rogers gave him back a deeply skeptical eyebrow, and Clint shrugged. “What? It’s not like you ever asked before!”

“And if I did ask you to do that, you’d feel bound to go along with me and make sure I didn’t touch anything dangerous too, wouldn’t you?” Rogers’ voice held a deeply bitter note, but he still took up the plate and led the way across the lawn, as if he didn’t have a doubt in the world that Clint would fall in behind him. Either that, or he was fed up enough to just kick his way into the garage and find the secret door to the underground workshop on his own.

“Well,” Clint caught up the coffeepot and jogged after, “either that, or you could tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll help you find it, and that’ll keep us both outta trouble for awhile.” Again with the skeptical face, but this time Clint met it with a grin. “What? Call it a bilateral show of trust if you wanna, but we got to start somewhere, right Cap?”

That won him a glance, sharp and blue over one shoulder, the eyebrow above in a challenging arc. “About damn time,” he said, drawing up to the garage and turning beside its keypad lock. “Get us inside, and we’ll talk.”

***

Text from: Ghostface -- Where r u?

From: TheLastOf -- Workshop. U back? How was Jersey?

From: Ghostface -- Disgusting as usual. Is he with U?

Clint leaned out over the handrail and scanned the floor below to be sure Rogers was still down there going through Howard’s desk and files. Then he settled back against the big robot arm he’d found up here in the graveyard of half-finished ideas, and replied to the question James hadn’t asked as well.

From TheLastOf -- Y. He’s fine. Fury with U?

From Ghostface -- Comin in hot.

Clint sighed, slipped his phone into his tac suit pocket, and leaned back over the ledge. “Hey Cap?” he called.

“It’s Steve,” the man answered, not looking up from the folder he had splayed across the desk blotter. 

“Right, Steve, sorry. I’m gonna go back up to the Garage for a little, and, uh...”

That won him a glance, and a chilly little smile. “You don’t need to run interference with Fury for me, Clint. It’s fine if he knows we’re down here.”

He blinked. “Well, that’s good, because he’s, uh-”

That was when the phone rang -- not Clint’s, but the one on Howard Stark’s desk. Rogers put up one finger to Clint, and plucked it out of the cradle. “Rogers. Oh, hello, Ms Arbogast. Bambi, of course. Sorry.” 

Huh. Bambi? Since when was Rogers on a first name basis with the fearsome shadow-dictator/admin assistant over at SI? Last Clint had known, Arbogast didn’t let anyone from the White Star end of things get cosy with her. Rogers was turning out to be an intriguing exception all around.

“You did?” Rogers grinned as Clint clambered along an I beam so he could drop to the workshop level at the base of the stairs. “That’s great. Would you arrange a meeting with her for me? Casual setting if possible. Yes, I know she’s a journalist, that’s kind of why I want to talk to her. Well, from what I can see Everhardt was the only one actually doing any digging at all at the time, and I think she might know some more beyond what she was allowed to put in her stories.”

Clint grimaced, trying not to imagine everything that could go wrong with letting Steve Rogers talk to a reporter about anything at all, let alone a bulldog like Everhardt. But while that might be arguably his monkey if, say, Everhardt were to try and kill him during the interview, it definitely was NOT his circus. The Ringmaster himself was coming down the stairs, leather coat flapping like bat wings, and hell to pay in his eye. Barnes was three steps behind Fury, sniperface firmly in place, but cracking just a bit around the eyes to show a simmering combination of anger and relief. 

So this was gonna be fun.

“Ok, good. And can I have a couple of hours with you sometime this week? I’d like to go over some of Stark Industries’ charitable donations with you -- get an idea of where we’re throwing our weight these days.” Rogers glanced up as Fury and Barnes came down the stairs, flashed them both a smile and the same ‘hang on a minute’ finger he’d shown Clint, then returned his attention to the phone. “Tomorrow at ten. Got it. Thanks so much, Bambi. I’ll see you then.”

Fury huffed to a stop on the workshop floor, turned to Clint, and with a glance demanded to know whether he’d maybe fallen on his head a few too many times in his infancy. Clint grinned, and with a shrug allowed as how maybe he had been, but what was he gonna do about it now? Safely behind Fury’s shoulder, Barnes rolled his eyes and allowed a tickle of a smile to break the ice away from his scowl. 

_Who?_ Barnes signed, with a meaning glance toward Rogers.

 _SI Dragon Mom,_ Clint signed back, then added _I think he’s gonna come out. Reporter._

 _Fuck’s sake!_ Fury signed as Rogers and Arbogast finished with the pleasantries and ended the call.

“Colonel Fury,” Rogers cut in, a note of amusement in his voice. “Good to see you. I was about to ask Clint if he could track you down.”

“Well, I’m not all that hard to find,” Fury replied, helping himself to one of the workshop chairs. “Just look for the idiot making the biggest pile of trouble, and I’ll generally be there kicking his ass for it.”

“Sounds exhausting,” Rogers came back with a smile like butter wouldn’t melt off it. Barnes made a noise of strangled humor in his throat, and that made Rogers’ smile turned just a little more genuine. “You should let me help you out with that.”

“Help me,” was what Fury’s words said, but what his face said was more like _You had better not be funnin’ me son, or I will snatch you bald so help me God._

Rogers kept that smile on though, and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “Well, if I’m going to be held publicly accountable for what White Star does,” he said in a far-too-reasonable voice, “then I figure I ought to know what White Star is actually up to. He can tell you I’m no good at making up lies on the fly,” Rogers tipped a nod to Barnes. “But give me a bit of fair warning, and I can make you think a house fire’s a candle in the wind.”

“Or pneumonia’s a little springtime cold,” Barnes agreed, pure threat in his voice, which Clint worked hard not to find adorable, on account of metal elbows were sharp.

“It was always the plan to put me in front of the public,” Rogers went on, a glance too quick, and too loaded to be read scraping over Barnes before he fixed his attention back on Fury. “That’s what you’ve been telling me since I woke up here; the fancy clothes, the history lessons, the business and public speaking coaching; all that’s really no different from the old USO act, just with fewer chorus girls. And frankly Colonel, I think we both know that’s a waste of the serum’s potential.”

Fury did that thing where he stared at you and waited for you to get the jitters, but Rogers didn’t seem like he was sweating at all, and finally, it was Fury who blinked. “The last thing I need is a loose cannon in my executive crew,” he growled.

Rogers’ smile only deepened. “Then I guess you’d better not treat me like a weapon and only pull me out when you want to point me at someone,” he came back sharply, then let his smirk fade into a heavy earnestness that looked bulletproof. “I’m not a figurehead, I’m a _leader_ ,” he said. “So you need to figure out how to let me lead from the front. There’s too much at stake right now to have the two of us at odds over this.”

“Steve,” Barnes began, only to pull up short when Fury put up a silencing hand.

“You don’t know the field,” Fury said. “It’s a different war, a different game from the one you played in Europe.”

“Then teach it to me,” Rogers chinned up to the challenge without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m a quick study.”

“We’re a private company, not the US Army. You won’t have the weight of the Government behind you if you screw up.”

Rogers grinned again, meaner this time. “Colonel Phillips told us Howling Commandos on our second mission out that we were officially off the books, and if we got killed or captured in the field it was officially not his problem.” Rogers’ jaw bunched at the end of the word, flattening that smile just enought to tell what a strain it was for him not to glance Barnes’ way. “I’m used to running without a safety net, Colonel.”

“It ain’t like that!” Barnes shoved forward, jittering inside his skin the way he sometimes did when the pre-war memories were winding him up, making him forget where he was and who he had become. “It ain’t runnin off on your lonesome so’s nobody knows where to find you! It ain’t jumpin outta a plane an kickin your way into a place without backup! It’s different! You can’t just-”

“Barnes,” Fury’s voice came down like a wall, though he didn’t ever once take his eye off Rogers. “Your point’s taken.” He squared his shoulders to the front again, and continued. “And so is yours, Cap. It’s about time you and me laid some cards out on the table. You wanna start with why you’re using Howard’s phone to set up dates with reporters?”

And there went Rogers’ Gosh-Who-Me smile again as he tapped at a corner of the desk blotter. “Because Howard wrote this reporter’s name and her number right here about two weeks before he died,” he said. “His handwriting’s pretty shaky, but I can make out ‘ask re Afghanistan.’ So I figure it had something to do with his son’s kidnapping. I want to know what they talked about.”

That kinda put the pin back in everyone’s grenade. Even Barnes was thrown by the curveball, though he was probably relying on his sniperface to cover the fact. Fury tilted his head to peer at the scribble, which Clint could just make out, along with the date and phone number, and ... “Christine Everhardt did several stories on Stark’s kid before he died, didn’t she?” Clint recalled. “I think she was playing up the whole Prodigal Son of the Merchant of Death angle. Pissed Howard right the fuck off was what it did.”

“So why did he leave himself a note to call her?” Rogers summed it all up with a knowing glance around the room.

“Because nobody knew his son was dead yet,” Clint went ahead and jumped through the hoop when a long beat of silence proved the others were just gonna stubborn it out.

“But if he ever thought his son was taken alive, why didn’t Howard put any White Star resources to work finding him?” Rogers asked, with the air of someone who couldn’t quite believe nobody had asked that question before.

This time, Fury took the hit. “We had a lot of other things on our plate when Howard’s son went missing.” he said, and he was probably aiming for patience in his tone, but it was hitting closer to defensive. “Between Hydra finding you, SHIELD nearly capturing Barnes, and the COO of Stark Industries disappearing under suspicion of illegal arms dealing, we didn’t have the spare resources to go chasing after ghosts just for fun.”

Rogers gave him an unimpressed look and asked, “So there was no White Star action taken on the kidnapping?”

“It was a hot zone. State Department and Military CID were already digging the place up looking, and we were already stretched too thin on this side of the Atlantic, as the attack on Carter proved to us.” Clint was impressed at how Fury could say that without his voice shaking in rage at having been so terribly blindsided. But that was probably why he was in charge, not Clint. Well, that and the paperwork too, probably. 

“By the time we caught any slack,” Fury went on, “they were already digging out the terrorist camp and naming the dead hostages by their dental records and finger prints. It was over, and we were just too late.”

“So you all thought he was dead?” Rogers asked, fiddling with a file folder. 

“ _Howard_ thought he was dead,” Fury corrected. “Or close enough to it that he rewrote his will to cut his son out of it.”

Rogers flipped the folder open then, spun it in place, and shoved it to Fury’s side of the desk. “No he didn’t. If he’d thought his son was dead, the will wouldn’t have given three years to show up and claim the whole kit and kabootle, pending a psychiatry exam and a DNA test.” He leaned his elbows on the cluttered blotter, and pinned them all, one by one, with a piercing blue stare. “Howard thought his son was _compromised_ , not dead. This will was supposed to be a clue, telling us to find him, in case Howard couldn’t.”

Clint took a deep breath, blinking as the data points started to line up in a whole new way. Over by the desk, he saw Barnes narrow his eyes, clearly thinking just as hard. Fury just took a breath, laced his fingers together, and regarded Rogers over them. “Go on...”

“Well, it seems to me,” Rogers said, taking a measuring glance at each of them, but letting it rest on Barnes just a little longer. “Seems to me that there’s a lot of people who don’t come back from experiences like kidnapping and ransom exchanges, but there’s a lot _more_ who do. And in a war zone with more factions than one or two in play, there’s a whole lot of ways that things can turn out.” 

Rogers sat back in the seat and folded his own hands over the desk. “I met someone this weekend who probably shouldn’t have survived what he did, and it got me thinking about all of us,” he waved a hand to take in more than just the four men in the workshop. “If any of our people went missing, we’d be damned sure we had a body before we wrote them off.”

“Damn straight,” Clint put in. “Especially knowing the kind of shit that HYDRA can pull.” 

“So we need to go looking for Stark’s son,” Rogers went on, nodding to Clint’s point. “Even if he is dead, and we just recover his body, we need to be sure, because this,” he tapped the opened folder, “is an Achilles’ heel we really can’t afford to overlook.”

Barnes swore softly in Russian, and Clint was pretty sure all four of them were imagining having to turn over Stark Industries, the mansion, and all of White Star’s operating capital to a man who already had his reasons for hating his father, but might just be under HYDRA’s, thumb as well. Clint stole a glance at the acting Director, to see how he was handling the idea, but there were too many moving parts in that one-eyed scowl for him to make it out. 

“You don’t think he’d have made a try for the inheritance by now, if he was still alive?” Fury asked after a moment, probing Rogers’ theory for cracks.

Rogers stared back without blinking. “I think it’d be stupid of us to leave that to chance. After all, no matter what his relationship with his father might have been, the kid was still a Stark, and he must have gotten more from Howard than just a lot of money. And I’ll tell you this for nothing -- Howard might’ve been more of a tinkerer than a fighter, but I still wouldn’t want anyone with his kinda smarts working against me.”

Barnes shook his head in emphatic agreement, and Fury sat back, giving up all pretense to resistance with a sigh. “All right, then this’ll be your case, Deputy Director Rogers,” he said, and acted like he didn’t see Rogers blink back from the WTF title like it had smacked him in the forehead. “Johnson and Romanoff are working on Flowers’ encryptions. I’ll have Klein get you the records we have on the kidnapping in the morning.”

“I’d like to see everything we have on the son,” Rogers put in, standing when Fury did, and flipping the folder closed as well. “If he got away from his kidnappers, I’ll need to know where he might have gone to heal up from whatever happened.”

“Have Klein get whatever you need, and work with Delta team for logistics,” Fury threw back as he headed for the stairs, either not seeing, or else ignoring the glare Barnes whipped in his direction.

“I think you’re forgetting the other half of our sharing moment,” Rogers called, his face set in a scowl that said plainly that he wasn’t gonna be bought off with some busywork and a wild goose chase.

With his foot on the step, Fury turned and smirked. “Oh, I haven’t forgotten. It’s just that I’m late for an interrogation report on your captive, and you’re late for a debriefing with Assistant Director Hill, so we’re gonna have to leave our quid pro quo for after the dust settles.” 

Rogers put on the kind of face that Clint interpreted as ‘Aw, debriefing...’ but he nodded anyway, and bent to drop the will back into the file cabinet he’d jimmied earlier. “I’ll have Ms. Arbogast call your office to set up the meeting, shall I?” 

Clint had to stifle a snicker at that, but he was glad he had when Fury glared back with a nod. “Fine. And while you’re busy with Hill, you can have Barnes and Barton go through some of the boxes in the attic.”

“What?” Barnes snapped.

“Aw, attic no,” Clint groaned.

Fury just let that mean smile of his. “Howard told me he had cleaners gather up all of his belongings and photographs after Maria died and Tony moved out,” he said, continuing his climb to the garage. “I figure most of it should still be up there now, waiting for you to get started.”

Barnes turned back to shoot Clint a glare, the plates on his arm whirring in annoyance. Clint backed away, both hands turned upward in a shrug to demonstrate his complete and utter innocence. “Not my fault,” he said, “I was minding my own business by the pool!”

“I didn’t say it was your fault,” Barnes glowered, stalking forward. “I’m gonna blame you anyways.”

Clint glanced toward Rogers, and the thin strand of hope he held out for a rescue from that quarter, but that one glance was enough to drop the play right out of his mind, and bring both feet solid to the floor. The man had gone bloodless white, so pale that tiny blond freckles stood out across his nose and cheeks. His blue eyes were wide, focused on the middle distance and flicking restlessly at nothing as he checked and rechecked some unseen tally in his mind.

Behind him, Clint heard Barnes take a sharp breath, and a hesitant step toward the desk. “Steve?” he asked, wary and worried.

“Did...” Rogers swallowed then, and dredged up a cheap plastic smile from somewhere as he blinked the two of them back into focus. “Did he say Howard’s son was named _Tony?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, Death lilies! It took me a lot longer to knock the final chapter into any shape I liked, but it's here at last, and all for you! If you like it, I'd love to hear from you about why. If you REALLY like it, I hope you'll direct thence other friends who might like it too, because I don't write these things for ME, after all.
> 
> Cheers to all my along-the-road cheerleaders. I value each of you beyond rubies, and if you'd like to come and hang out with my multishipping, multifanfom, semipolitical semiaesthetic semifashionista mongrel of a blog on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard), please do.

**Author's Note:**

> [Trilliath](http://archiveofourown.org/users/trilliath/pseuds/trilliath/) asked for ID Porn with a side of Wealthy Benefactor/Starving Artist and a Mutually Beneficial Arrangement. I was the one who decided to flip the expected casting of this pairing onto its head by way of a flagrant What If AU.
> 
> What can I say? I do what I WANT!
> 
> For those who are curious, the fic is 90% finished. I am posting it in chapters, dropping twice or three times a week, in order to boost my enthusiasm for the final haul to the finish line. Which means that if any of you who read this feel like commenting to cheer me on, I'd be enormously grateful to hear your thoughts.  
> Cheers!


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